Read Time 6 minutes
Tags AI Geopolitics Demis Hassabis DeepMind OpenAI Elon Musk Sam Altman AGI Competition
Court documents released as part of the ongoing Musk vs Altman legal fight reveal a consistent theme Elon Musk Sam Altman and their associates view Demis Hassabis co founder and CEO of Google DeepMind as the central figure in the race to artificial general intelligence The emails and text exchanges span from 2016 to 2023 and show concern over DeepMind progress mixed with personal attempts to slow its trajectory
The context is a lawsuit centered on OpenAI shift to a for profit structure and Elon Musk claim that he was deceived by Sam Altman But the recurring subject is Hassabis reputation track record and influence
What the documents show
One Early alarm in 2016 Back in February 2016 Musk emailed Sam Altman and Greg Brockman about hiring at OpenAI We need to do what it takes to get the top talent he wrote Either we get the best people in the world or we will get whipped by Deepmind Whatever it takes to bring on ace talent is fine by me
Musk outlined the core issue Deepmind is causing me extreme mental stress If they win it will be really bad news with their one mind to rule the world philosophy They are obviously making major progress and well they should given the talent level over there
Two Escalation in 2018 A February 16 2018 message from Shivon Zilis to Musk states I think there are a lot of no brainers to explore but the thing that keeps calling out to me is there is a very low probability of a good future if someone doesn t slow Demis down Slowing him down is the only non negotiable net good action I can see You don t realize how much you have an ability to influence him directly or otherwise slow him down
Musk responded Best to talk by phone about this later tonight I doubt I could do so in a meaningful way Later in December 2018 Musk wrote to Altman and Brockman My probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0 percent Not 1 percent I wish it were otherwise Unfortunately humanity s future is in the hands of Demis
Three Broader industry view Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave pre trial testimony in September 2025 and acknowledged Google was by far the dominant player in machine learning around 2015 He said DeepMind was well known even in that time frame and that Microsoft was tracking DeepMind progress because deep neural networks were showing promise in language translation and other fields
Nadella noted I probably knew Hassabis a little from around 2015 just after I became CEO He explained that gaming environments were attractive for reinforcement learning because the objective function and reward function are clear and that Hassabis background as a game developer made DeepMind approach notable
Personal and organizational impact
One Talent poaching and fallout Elon Musk gave pre trial testimony on September 26 2025 and said the recruitment of Ilya Sutskever was what actually caused Larry Page to stop being friends with me Sutskever went back and forth multiple times saying he would join OpenAI or stay at Google When Sutskever finally decided to join OpenAI Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Demis Hassabis did everything they could to keep Ilya When Ilya finally decided to join OpenAI that ended the friendship with Larry Page
Musk said they were very upset about Sutskever and that he is still getting the silent treatment a decade later
Two Altman view of the race A document filed on January 6 2026 but likely from 2016 to 2018 shows Altman writing Progress fundamentally has to be made by non profit interesting direction you could go Everything I perceive with OpenAI race dynamics vs Demis plus brain plus whatever gotta get there first He added Another angle DeepMind will never do that much that s interesting It is better for us to become increasingly kings of this industry The choice defines us
In early 2019 Altman was still trying to tempt Musk into phone calls by promising some mild Demis updates to share In 2023 Mira Murati was emailing Nadella saying it is very important that we don t lose researchers to Demis or Elon
Three Internal alignment on risk Ilya Sutskever wrote to Musk in September 2017 The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship So do we So it is a bad idea to create a structure for OpenAI where you could become a dictator if you chose to especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility
Why Hassabis matters in this narrative
One Technical credibility Hassabis is a fellow of the Royal Society and in 2024 shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John M Jumper for AI protein structure prediction He began his career in videogames at Bullfrog worked as lead AI programmer on Lionhead Black and White and founded Elixir Studios His work on AlphaGo AlphaZero and protein folding gave DeepMind credibility that others lacked at the time
Two Structural advantage DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 giving it access to compute data and research infrastructure that independent labs could not match Competitors saw this as a structural gap that required aggressive hiring and funding to close
Three Narrative of control The phrase one mind to rule the world philosophy used by Musk reflects a concern that whoever reaches AGI first will set the rules for its deployment The documents show that both OpenAI and external observers saw DeepMind as the most likely candidate in the mid 2010s
Implications for today
One Competition drives acceleration The fear of falling behind DeepMind pushed OpenAI to accelerate research and shift its structure to raise capital This dynamic continues as labs race on benchmarks and capability
Two Safety and governance concerns The documents show that even early on key figures were thinking about control and dictatorship risks in AGI This predates much of the public debate on alignment and governance
Three Talent concentration The movement of researchers like Ilya Sutskever between labs illustrates how individual contributors can shift competitive balance This is why hiring and retention remain central to strategy
For observers the takeaway is that the AGI race has been shaped by personal relationships and competitive fear as much as by technical progress For labs the lesson is that talent and infrastructure remain the primary bottlenecks
Do you think the focus on slowing competitors is a rational safety strategy or does it undermine open research and progress Share your view in the comments