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Among the most interesting parts of Elon Musk\u2019s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI wasn\u2019t the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all knew that was coming<\/a>). It was about an old friend.<\/p>\n Musk testified that one of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling-out with Google\u2019s Larry Page over AI safety \u2014 specifically, a conversation in which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Page shrugged it off as \u201cfine,\u201d so long as AI itself survived. Page called Musk a \u201cspeciest\u201d for being \u201cpro human.\u201d Musk called the attitude \u201cinsane.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s mostly notable given how close the two once were. Fortune included them on its 2016 list of secretly best-friend business leaders; Musk was so comfortable with Page that he regularly crashed at his Palo Alto home. Page once told Charlie Rose that he\u2019d rather give his money to Musk<\/a> than to charity.<\/p>\n The friendship didn\u2019t survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help launch the company in 2015, Page felt personally betrayed and cut off contact.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a story Musk has told before \u2014 including to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk \u2014 but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath. Page hasn\u2019t commented, and it\u2019s worth remembering everything that Musk said was in service of a lawsuit. Still, as recently as 2023 he told tech podcaster Lex Fridman he wanted to patch things up: \u201cWe were friends for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n