Elon Musk on Tuesday reposted a claim that ChatGPT has been linked to several suicide deaths, encouraging users to stay away from the leading chatbot and provoking OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who responded with a defensive statement attacking Grok and Tesla.
Key data
Musk republished a statement from cryptocurrency influencer account DogeDesigner: “ChatGPT has been linked to 9 deaths related to its use, and in 5 cases its interactions are alleged to have caused suicide, including teenagers and adults.”
He paired it with a public call to stay away from the chatbot, writing: “Don’t let your loved ones use ChatGPT.”
Forbes could not independently verify the statistics, for which DogeDesigner did not provide a source.
Hours later, Altman responded with a detailed statement calling the situation tragic and complicated and criticizing Grok, who has been under fire for generating non-consensual sexual images as well as Tesla’s Autopilot feature.
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Crucial ideals
“Apparently, more than 50 people have died in accidents involving Autopilot. I only rode in a car using it once, some time ago, but my first thought was that it was not at all certain that Tesla had released it,” Altman wrote in response to Musk’s accusation. “I won’t even talk about some of Grok’s decisions.”
Tangent
A 2024 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) linked Tesla’s Autopilot systems to nearly 1,000 crashes in recent years, including more than two dozen fatal incidents. Investigators found that many of the accidents were caused by distracted drivers, some of whom appeared to mistakenly assume that the driver-assist technology worked as fully autonomous driving. Musk has long argued that Tesla’s Autopilot “saves lives” by limiting human error, calling it “a major safety improvement.” Last week, it touted sales of the company’s Full Self-Driving Mode service, or FSD, by announcing that it would move from a one-time $8,000 purchase to being available exclusively as a subscription.
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Key background
The dispute between Musk and Altman dates back to the beginnings of OpenAI, which the two co-founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory focused on developing artificial intelligence for the public good. Musk left OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018, later criticizing the organization’s transition to a for-profit structure and its close collaboration with Microsoft. Since then, Musk has repeatedly accused Altman of abandoning OpenAI’s original mission, while Altman has publicly defended the company’s evolution as necessary to fund advanced research in AI. Earlier this month, Musk’s chatbot Grok came under fire for generating sexual deepfakes of users, including minors, prompting international condemnation from government leaders and the mother of one of Musk’s children, Ashley St. Clair, who was targeted by trolls using Grok. X has since committed to limiting access to Grok’s imaging features.
This article was originally published by Forbes US
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