Elon Musk reportedly once insulted an OpenAI intern after he questioned his decision to pursue AGI tech at Tesla

• Elon Musk cofounded OpenAI – the ChatGPT creator – before leaving in 2018.
• He reportedly called one intern a "jackass" after he questioned his decision to pursue AGI at Tesla.

Elon Musk reportedly called an intern at OpenAI a "jackass" after he questioned whether Musk had thought through plans to develop AI tech at Tesla, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Musk, who is currently the world's second-richest person, cofounded the company behind ChatGPT in 2015, but quit in 2018 after he grew frustrated with the lack of progress, and his offer to take charge was rejected.

Musk reportedly told staff he thought Tesla had a better chance of achieving artificial general intelligence – the point at which AI is as capable as humans.

But one intern challenged Musk on whether he'd thought through the safety implications of developing the controversial technology elsewhere, per the report. Then Musk "grew visibly frustrated" and called the intern a "jackass," the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

An OpenAI executive later had a "jackass" trophy made for the intern to commemorate the quarrel, presented to him on a pillow, the newspaper reports.

"You've got to have a little fun," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the Journal. "This is the stuff that culture gets made out of."

Musk used the same insult in a Twitter Space last December to disparage a former Twitter software engineer who questioned his prediction that the social-media company would need to do a "total rewrite" of the code.

In the past few months, Musk has been critical of OpenAI on Twitter.

In December 2022, he said of ChatGPT: "The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly." And in February, accused the company of being "a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft."

"Most of that is not true, and I think Elon knows that," Altman responded on the "On With Kara Swisher" podcast, adding: "he's a jerk."

ChatGPT became the fastest-growing app in history by reaching 100 million users in just over two months, per a study from UBS.

And contrary to Musk's prediction five years ago, OpenAI has been leading the race to achieve AGI – prompting Google to issue a "code red" over the chatbot's rise. The search giant also faced criticism from its employees over its Bard chatbot, who described it as "rushed" and "botched," per CNBC.

As well as its self-driving software, Tesla has been working on a humanoid robot called Optimus. It was showcased at the company's AI Day last year and Musk said it should go on sale by 2027, per CNET. Musk seemed to be less confident about the company's role in the technology's future in 2022, tweeting: "Tesla AI might play a role in AGI."

Tesla and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.