Elon Musk’s critique on ChatGPT safety draws sharp response from Sam Altman

The long-simmering rivalry between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has reached a critical point as the CEO of X slammed the ChatGPT over its growing safety concerns, putting the lives of people at risk.

Musk responded to a post, explaining that ChatGPT has been linked to several deaths by suicide among adults and teens.

The founder of xAI reposted the post with a caption, encouraging the users not to use the AI chatbot in question.

The caption reads, “Don’t let your loved ones use ChatGPT.”

Musk’s critique on ChatGPT safety drew a sharp response from the CEO Sam Altman who defended the chatbot while targeting Tesla and Grok.

Taking to X, Altman posted, “Sometimes you complain about ChatGPT being too restrictive, and then in cases like this you claim it's too relaxed. Almost a billion people use it and some of them may be in very fragile mental states.”

Showing the determination to make the AI tool safe for all people, Altman responded, “We will continue to do our best to get this right and we feel a huge responsibility to do the best we can, but these are tragic and complicated situations that deserve to be treated with respect.”

Altman also attacked Musk’s Tesla and Grok over fatal crashes and online abuse.

“Apparently more than 50 people have died from crashes related to Autopilot. I only ever rode in a car using it once, some time ago, but my first thought was that it was far from a safe thing for Tesla to have released. I won't even start on some of the Grok decisions,” Altman slammed Musk.

“You take ‘every accusation is a confession’ so far, " he said.

The remark-based tussle over AI safety comes when Elon Musk earlier this week sought compensatory damages in the range of $79 billion to $134 billion over defrauding allegations from OpenAI and Microsoft.

A jury trial is now set for late April in Oakland. Elon Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018. In 2023 he launched his AI company, xAI and initiated the legal battle in 2024.