SELF-REVERSAL
MUSK SIGNED THE PAUSE. THEN HE BUILT XAI TO ACCELERATE.
“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
Musk signed the Future of Life Institute's open letter calling for a six-month pause on frontier training runs. Nineteen months later, at an xAI recruiting event in OpenAI's old headquarters, his strategy was: 'No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down, and it only had one strategy: to accelerate.' Condition preserved: the letter's ask was time-boxed to six months (expired ~September 2023) — the reversal is on strategy (pause → accelerate), not mere expiry. Extra sting: xAI was founded in March 2023, the same month he signed.
SELF-REVERSAL
“No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down, and it only had one strategy: to accelerate.”
xAI recruiting event, San Francisco, 2024-10-01; reported via The Verge's account through an attendee's X post.
SOURCE
ORIGINAL SOURCEPause Giant AI Experiments: An Open LetterFuture of Life Institute (letter text; signatory via FLI verification and contemporaneous reporting)