The conflict between Elon Musk and OpenAI (along with Sam Altman and Microsoft) is anything but surprising — it could have been predicted a thousand years ago. Back then there were no computers, no power plants, yet humanity’s core afflictions were already in place. They arose with our species and will vanish only with it. Greed and the drive to dominate — those are their names, well known to biologists.
The damages sought are staggering — up to $134 billion — and who deceived whom is for the court to decide.
What’s really interesting here is something else. This blazing conflict may turn out to be far more than a quarrel between ex-partners: it could become the defining case for the future regulation and ethics of the entire AI industry. Right now we are watching two radically opposing visions of tomorrow disguised as a lawsuit. At its core, this is a clash between Sam Altman’s “pragmatic capitalism” and Elon Musk’s “messianic techno-utopianism.” It is a fight over who will own the “intelligence” of the future — a corporation closely tied to Microsoft, or a billionaire who claims (at least in words) he wants to use that intelligence to solve civilization’s existential problems.
In this light, the Musk–OpenAI feud acquires a deeper, philosophical weight. Today, instead of becoming a tool for a qualitative leap in human consciousness or solving fundamental problems, AI — driven by global financial and power elites — is being turned into yet another instrument in the ancient race for money and control. The system has taken the familiar shortcut: it transforms a breakthrough capable of reshaping human awareness into just another commodity, another form of entertainment.
Nothing new, of course. Humanity has always excelled at turning every technology into a tool of domination. The Musk–Altman clash is a textbook case. One wants to leverage AI for ambitious goals like colonizing Mars; the other is erecting a colossal corporate machine simply to keep market supremacy. Instead of vertical progress — ethics, new meanings, a genuine transformation of the human being — we get the stockpiling of compute and data for the sole purpose of stockpiling wealth. Instead of transcending biological and cognitive limits — another money-printing press.
This situation brutally illuminates the root cause of the problem. We are trying to build “superintelligence” while clinging to the psychology and motivations of people from ancient times. That is precisely the barrier thinkers have long warned about: without changing humanity itself, any “super-technology” will merely become a more efficient way of running in circles.