Musk’s high‑profile AI warning

Elon Musk used a viral video to argue that Sam Altman should not be trusted with what he called “superpowerful” artificial intelligence, and the clip spread into a much bigger fight over who gets to build the most powerful computers in the world. (x.com) (cnbc.com) The person at the center of the warning is Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015, left before it became dominant, and now runs a rival company called xAI. (usnews.com) (openai.com) That history is why this is not just an abstract safety argument. Musk and OpenAI are already headed toward a federal trial scheduled for April 27, 2026, over Musk’s claim that OpenAI abandoned its original nonprofit mission. (geeky-gadgets.com) (openai.com) OpenAI answered that pressure this week by asking the California and Delaware attorneys general to investigate what it called Musk’s “anti-competitive behavior.” In the same filing fight, OpenAI said Musk has used lawsuits, public attacks, and business pressure to slow a direct competitor. (cnbc.com) (fastcompany.com) The “superpowerful” part of Musk’s message lands at a moment when AI companies are openly saying some new systems are too risky for normal release. Axios reported on April 8 that Anthropic began a tightly controlled rollout of a model called Mythos because officials believed it could help cripple a Fortune 100 company or penetrate defense systems. (axios.com) Musk has been making that basic warning for years, but he is now making it while selling his own alternative. xAI’s Grok chatbot is part of Musk’s pitch that the future of AI should not be left to OpenAI, even as xAI itself has faced backlash and restrictions over Grok image tools in 2026. (time.com) (zawya.com) That contradiction is part of why the post hit so hard online. Musk is warning that one man cannot be trusted with extreme AI power while he is simultaneously asking the public, regulators, and courts to take his side in a live struggle over who controls the next wave of AI companies. (x.com) (cnbc.com) (openai.com) So the post was really doing two jobs at once. It framed AI as something as dangerous as a weapons system, and it framed Altman, not just the technology, as the person voters, regulators, and judges should worry about before that April 27 courtroom fight begins. (x.com) (opentools.ai)