AI leaders versus Elon Musk
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Top AI executives are positioning themselves in opposition to Elon Musk's approach, former Tesla president Jon McNeill tells Axios.
Why it matters: Musk's approach to AI mirrors his approach to everything else: move fast, question every assumption, and push past guardrails others won't touch.
- AI leaders see that as a threat, not just a rival business strategy.
The big picture: McNeill — cofounder of DVx Ventures — sat down with Axios to discuss his new book, The Algorithm, that details Musk's management playbook from the inside.
- McNeill saw Musk's playbook up close at Tesla and knows the original OpenAI team well.
- OpenAI operated out of Tesla's offices when the AI lab first launched.
What they're saying: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk's relationship is "so broken that if Elon does something, Sam sort of looks at him... and says, I'll do the opposite," McNeill tells Axios.
- McNeill says he senses that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei "has very little to no respect for Elon's ethics" as well.
- Yann Lecun, former chief AI scientist at Meta responded to a Musk post on X saying "People who pomote authoritarianism and white supremacy are in the worst 1% of society," referring to Musk's political views.
- Elon Musk did not respond to request for comment. Anthropic and OpenAI declined to comment.
Driving the news: In the AI buildout, McNeill says Musk is pushing boundaries on safety guardrails where others aren't willing to compromise.
- After Anthropic lost its Pentagon contract over a disagreement on safety measures, Musk's xAI (and OpenAI) stepped in to fill the gap, signing an agreement for the military to use its AI model, Grok.
- Musk has championed Grok for being "based" (slang for speaking without filters). But Grok had previously been capable of creating sexualized images of people of all ages, violent depictions of sexual assault and has spewed antisemitism.
- Musk blamed users for "adversarial hacking of Grok prompt," leading to unexpected results, which he says were later fixed.
Yes, but: Musk's boundary pushing has produced results. McNeill recounts Musk working to make buying a Tesla take as few clicks as ordering pizza. He did it successfully.
- Musk also used that same approach in the 2024 election: "He was like, okay, I can't pay for people's votes, but I can have like, a lottery," McNeill said.
- Musk's lawyers have argued the program was not a lottery because recipients were not chosen by chance but were paid to serve as spokespeople.
Flashback: Altman and Musk's feud goes back to 2015.
- Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, then departed the board in 2018.
- Musk has tried to buy OpenAI, sue OpenAI and Altman, criticizing the company for trying to maximize profits, even after he created his own AI startup, xAI, as a for-profit entity.
The bottom line: The AI race is often framed as a sprint to AGI.
- It's also become a values divide, with some leaders defining themselves in opposition to Musk.
