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Demis Hassabis emails Elon Musk
From: Demis Hassabis
Date: January 2, 2016 at 10:12:32 AM CST
To: Elon Musk
Subject: congrats on the falcon 9
Hi Elon
Happy new year to you, Talulah and the boys!
Congratulations on landing the Falcon 9, what an amazing achievement. Time to build out the fleet now!
I’ve seen you (and Sam and other OpenAI people) doing a lot of interviews recently extolling the virtues of open sourcing AI, but I presume you realise that this is not some sort of panacea that will somehow magically solve the safety problem? There are many good arguments as to why the approach you are taking is actually very dangerous and in fact may increase the risk to the world. Some of the more obvious points are well articulated in this blog post, that I’m sure you’ve seen, but there are also other important considerations:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/17/should-ai-be-open/
I’d be interested to hear your counter-arguments to these points.
Best
Demis
On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 8:18 AM Elon Musk wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
On Jan 2, 2016, at 11:06 AM, Ilya Sutskever wrote:
The article is concerned with a hard takeoff scenario: if a hard takeoff occurs, and a safe AI is harder to build than an unsafe one, then by opensorucing everything, we make it easy for someone unscrupulous with access to overwhelming amount of hardware to build an unsafe AI, which will experience a hard takeoff.
As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in openAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it’s totally OK to not share the science (even though sharing everything is definitely the right strategy in the short and possibly medium term for recruitment purposes).
From: Elon Musk
To: Ilya Sutskever
Cc: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman
Subject: Re: congrats on the falcon 9
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2016 17:11:18 -0000
Yup
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
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Previously: 65+ documents from Musk v. Altman and Elon Musk in the full archive
Previously: Elon Musk: “Deepmind is causing me extreme mental stress” (February 22, 2016)
Previously: Ilya Sutskever to Elon Musk: “You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship” (September 20, 2017)
Previously: Elon Musk: “Unfortunately, humanity’s future is in the hands of Demis” (December 26, 2018)
Previously: Sam Altman: “there’s no way we can hold a candle to DeepMind without many billions of dollars” (October 1, 2020)
Further reading from Slate Star Codex: Should AI Be Open? (December 17, 2015)
Further reading from The New York Times: Google Shakes Up A.I. Leadership (August 5, 2026)
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Steve Jobs and Google’s hiring
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:19:31 -0800
From: Alan Eustace
To: Steve Jobs
Cc: Bill Campbell, Sergey Brin, Larry Page
Steve,
Google would like to make an offer to Jean-Marie Hullot to run a small engineering center in Paris. Bill, Larry, Sergey, and Jean-Marie believe it is important to get your blessing before moving forward with this offer.
Jean-Marie has worked very hard to leave Apple on the best possible terms, and has agreed to abide by the terms of his non-solicit and non-compete clauses. He loves Apple, and would not do anything to hurt you or the company.
Google’s relationship with Apple is extremely important to us. If that relationship is any way threatened by this hire, please let me know, and we will pass on this opportunity.
Thanks.
Alan Eustace
SVP, Engineering
Google, Inc.
From: Jean-Marie Hullot
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 2:22 PM
To: Kim Sterling; Alan Eustace
Subject: Re: Offer
Alan, Kim,
Any update on Steve’s reaction?
Thanks,
Jean-Marie
On 4/4/06, Kim Sterling wrote:
Jean-Marie
Steve has not responded to Alan’s calls. We are trying another approach and hopefully we’ll be successful. I’ll keep you posted.
-Kim
On Apr 5, 2006, at 12:29 PM, Alan Eustace wrote:
Jean-Marie,
Steve didn’t respond to my email, but Bill Campbell promised to call him and verify that we are OK. He’s on the board at Apple and Google, so Steve will probably return his call :-) I’m on my way to India right now. This message is brought to you courtesy of wireless internet access on my flight. Now that is progress :-)
Alan
From: Jean-Marie Hullot
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 2:17 PM
To: Alan Eustace
Cc: Kim Sterling; Jean-Marie Hullot
Subject: Re: Offer
Alan,
I was not expecting this last step to be the easiest one... Let see how it goes with Bill Campbell’s help.
I’ll continue to take advantage of this interim period to do things one never gets time to do when working! During the next 2 weeks (spring school break in France) I’ll be away with my wife and 2 kids trekking in the Himalayas. Once again unlikely to get connected to my email or cell phone on a regular basis.
If there is a positive outcome with Steve during this period - which I hope! - I suggest you send offers to the other guys as soon as you can without waiting for me to be back. It has already been a really long stretch from them between 2 employments and I fear we will start to lose some soon. Let me know by email as well as soon as you know, I might be able to connect to the Internet.
I’ll leave tomorrow thursday and will be back in Paris on April 22nd.
Jean-Marie
From: Kim Sterling
Date: Apr 7, 2006 4:51 PM
Subject: FW: Offer
To: Jeff Huber
Jeff
Any word from Bill Campbell? I’m getting a bit worried about the chance of losing the rest of the team.
Kim
From: Jeff Huber
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 5:35 PM
To: Bill Campbell
Cc: Alan Eustace
Subject: Fwd: FW: Offer
Bill,
Just wanted to close the loop with you... Were you able to connect with Steve Jobs on Jean-Marie Hullot?
Thanks,
-Jeff
From: Bill Campbell
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 12:40 AM
To: Jeff Huber; Bill Campbell
Cc: Alan Eustace
Subject: RE: FW: Offer
Jeff
I am seeing him on Sunday....
Bill
On 4/9/06, Steve Jobs wrote:
Alan,
What would Jean-Marie be working on? We would have a problem if it is related to cell phone handsets, etc.
Steve
On Apr 10, 2006, at 2:03 AM, Alan Eustace wrote:
Steve,
Thank you very much for responding. Jean-Marie will not be working on anything having to do with cell phone handsets. Once he starts and has a chance to look around, we plan on narrowing down the list of possibilities. Jean-Marie has lots of talents, and we have lots of projects, so I’m certain that we can find an area where there is no conflict. I’d be happy to run the proposed general project area by you at that point, just to make sure that it doesn’t create a conflict. Would this be OK with you?
Alan
On 4/10/06, Steve Jobs wrote:
That would be fine with me.
Thanks,
Steve
On Apr 25, 2006, at 4:57 PM, Alan Eustace wrote:
Steve,
Jean-Marie would like to hire 4 people that used to work for him at Apple in Paris. Three left in Apple in December, and one gave notice in December, but was encouraged to complete his current assignment, which he agreed to do.
Jean-Marie did not believe that you would object to his hiring these specific people, as long as we don’t hire anyone else from Apple in Paris, but I wanted to confirm this with you, before I open the office, or any of these people start.
Are you OK with this? If not, I’m willing to cancel the entire thing. If you are OK with it, I’ll make sure to run the project area by you to make sure that there are no conflicts of interest with work that they did at Apple.
Alan
From: Steve Jobs
Date: Apr 26, 2006 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: Jean-Marie Hullot
To: Alan Eustace
Cc: Steve Jobs
Alan,
We’d strongly prefer that you not hire these guys.
Steve
On Apr 26, 2006, at 9:01 PM, Alan Eustace wrote:
Jean-Marie,
Steve is opposed to Google hiring these engineers. He didn’t say why, and I don’t think it is appropriate for me to go back for clarification. I can’t risk our relationship with Apple to make this happen over his objections. If you have any good ideas (or even bad ones), please let me know. Right now, it looks like if you want to keep this great team together, it will have to be at another company.
Alan
From: Jean-Marie Hullot
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 1:17 PM
To: Alan Eustace
Cc: Kim Sterling
Subject: Re: Response from Steve Jobs.
Well... Let me sleep on this.
jmh
From: Alan Eustace
Date: May 23, 2006 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: Jean-Marie Hullot
To: Steve Jobs
Steve,
Based on your strong preference that we not hire the ex-Apple engineers, Jean-Marie and I decided not to open a Google Paris engineering center. I appreciate your input into this decision, and your continued support of the Google/Apple partnership.
Alan
From: Alan Eustace
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 5:11 PM
To: Larry Page; Sergey Brin; Bill Campbell
Subject: Fwd: Jean-Marie Hullot
FYI.
Alan
[This document is from In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (2011).]
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Previously: 25+ documents from Steve Jobs in the full archive
Previously: Sergey Brin: “Irate call from Steve Jobs” (February 13, 2005)
Previously: Steve Jobs emails Adobe’s CEO (May 26, 2005)
Previously: Palm’s CEO emails Steve Jobs: “Your proposal […] is not only wrong, it is likely illegal” (August 24, 2007)
Anthropic cofounder emails Noam Shazeer
From: Jared Kaplan
Date: Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 3:40 PM
Subject: Interactive Language Models Draft from Anthropic
To: Noam Shazeer
Hi Noam,
We haven’t met, but of course I’m very familiar with your work on language models, and maybe you’re also aware of my work on GPT-3, Codex Models, and more uniquely, on Scaling Laws in ML (developed with Sam McCandlish and others).
I’d heard from friends that you’ve left Google and are starting your own company to develop large interactive language models. I guess I’ve also heard rumors that it’s been frustrating for you at Google, and you haven’t been able to move very quickly, due to “safety” and PR concerns.
I personally have complicated feelings about “AI Safety”, and Anthropic in general does take safety quite seriously, but I’ve been viewing the current climate of concern more as an opportunity rather than as an obstacle. So I lead a team here that’s just trying to solve these safety problems directly, in general, as I expect we will create a great deal of value when we succeed.
This is also tied to much of our other work here -- of course we are training large, powerful language and code models, but a lot of our focus is on further finetuning with RL on a large suite of tasks, as we expect this will lead to both greatly improved performance and much better steerability. With RL and a few other techniques, my hope is that many of the safety concerns with large language models just won’t be very difficult!
So I thought I’d share some very basic work (attached rough draft) we’ve been doing towards these goals. It’s more about science than concrete progress, but I think it shows that our goals are achievable, and it also gives a sense for what we’re actively working on now, which is making general language assistants that are helpful, honest, and harmless, and that can work with users on any task whatsoever.
Of course the real reason I’m reaching out is because I’m wondering if there’s a way for us to work together. We’ve already built an extremely well-funded company, the infrastructure for large LM training, sampling, and RL, and an exceptionally strong team. Most likely you’re focused on building your own effort, but if your real goal is just to make rapid progress with an exceptional team of researchers, I wonder if joining us could make sense for you.
Obviously, no hard feelings at all if you’re not interested, but I thought it would be worthwhile to at least float the possibility. If you are interested in chatting, just let me know and we can figure out a time?
Best,
Jared
[This document is from Garcia v. Character Technologies (2026).]
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Previously: Anthropic draft memo: “Product visions for early 2025” (June 15, 2023)
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