Ironically, OpenAI was conceived as a way to balance Google's dominance in AI.

Balance is too weak of a word. OpenAI was conceived specifically to prevent Google from getting AGI first. That was its original goal. At the time of its founding Google was the undisputed leader of AI anywhere in the world. Musk was then very worried about AGI being developed behind closed doors particularly Google, which was why he was the driving force behind the founding of OpenAI.

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CobrastanJorji 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Pffft. OpenAI was conceived to be Open, too.

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lemoncucumber 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s a common pattern for upstarts to embrace openness as a way to differentiate and gain a foothold then become progressively less open once they get bigger. Android is a great example.

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bitpush 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Last I checked, Android is still open source (as AOSP) and people can do whatever-the-f-they-want with the source code. Are we defining open differently?

	▲	lemoncucumber 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think we're defining "less" differently. You're interpreting "less open" to mean "not open at all," which is not what I said. There's a long history of Google slowly making the experience worse if you want to take advantage of the things that make Android open. For example, by moving features that were in the AOSP into their proprietary Play Services instead [1]. Or coming soon, preventing sideloading of unverified apps if you're using a Google build of Android [2]. In both cases, it's forcing you to accept tradeoffs between functionality and openness that you didn't have to accept before. You can still use AOSP, but it's a second class experience. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... [2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/google-will-block-si...
	▲	ipaddr 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Core is open source but for a device to be "Android compatible" and access the Google Play Store and other Google services, it must meet specific requirements from Google's Android Compatibility Program. These additional proprietary components are what make the final product closed source. The Android Open Source Project is not Android.

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dragonwriter 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I thought it was a workaround to Google's complete disinterest in productizing the AI research it was doing and publishing, rather than a way to balance their dominance in a market which didn't meaningfully exist.

	▲	mattnewton 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That’s how it turned out, but IIRC at the time of OpenAI’s founding, “AI” was search and RL which Google and deep mind were dominating, and self driving, which Waymo was leading. And OpenAI was conceptualized as a research org to compete. A lot has changed and OpenAI has been good at seeing around those corners.
	▲	sgt101 an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I think that Google didn't see the business case in that generation of models, and also saw significant safety concerns. If AI had been delayed by... 5 years... would the world really be a worse place? Yes - less exciting! But worse?
	▲	jonny_eh 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That was actually Character.ai's founding story. Two researchers at Google that were frustrated by a lack of resources and the inability to launch an LLM based chatbot. The founders are now back at Google. OpenAI was founded based on fears that Google would completely own AI in the future.
	▲	jpadkins 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Elon Musk specifically gave OAI $150M early on because of the risk of Google being the only Corp that has AGI or super-intelligence. These emails were part of the record in the lawsuit.