Письмо Сэма Альтмана 2022 года: OpenAI задумала open source, чтобы задушить конкурентов

Sam

Altman's 2022 Letter: OpenAI Considered Open Source to Stifle Competitors

In 2026, during the Musk v. Altman lawsuit, a letter from Sam Altman to OpenAI's board of directors dated October 1, 2022 became public: the company's chief proposed quickly releasing an open language model at the level of GPT-3 to make it harder for competitors to launch their own models, and for raising money.

What Sam Altman Proposed

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a letter to the board dated October 1, 2022, described a plan to create a language model "roughly at the level of GPT-3," capable of running locally on consumer hardware, and to release it as open source. According to Altman, the company was having "extensive discussions about open source strategy" and planned to revisit the topic at the next board meeting.

The main motive in the letter was not openness or mission, but timing and competition. Altman wanted to release the model "soon, before Stability or someone else does" — that is, to get ahead of Stability AI, the company that became famous for the open release of Stable Diffusion that same year, 2022.

• Date of the letter — October 1, 2022
• Author — Sam Altman, addressee — OpenAI's board of directors
• Plan — an open model at the level of GPT-3, running locally on consumer hardware
• Urgency — to release before Stability AI and other players
• Disclosed — in 2026 as part of the Musk v. Altman case

Why OpenAI Wanted an Open Model

An open model was needed by OpenAI as a weapon against competitors, not as a gift to the community — this follows directly from the text of the letter. Altman wrote that publishing such a model "discourages others from releasing similarly powerful models and makes funding new projects more difficult."

The logic here is market-driven, not altruistic. If a free model at the level of GPT-3 is already publicly available, it becomes harder for investors to justify investing in a startup building the same thing, and harder for competing labs to justify their own release. Openness turns into a barrier to entry for newcomers.

"Overall we believe this discourages others from releasing similarly powerful models and makes funding new projects more difficult," —

Sam Altman, from a letter to OpenAI's board of directors, October 1, 2022.

Why This Matters

The letter matters because it diverges from OpenAI's public rhetoric about openness for the benefit of humanity. Inside the company, as the 2022 document shows, open source was discussed as a tool of competitive pressure, not as a value in itself.

The context amplifies the effect: the letter surfaced precisely in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI, where the dispute revolves around the company's departure from its original nonprofit and open mission. Against this backdrop, OpenAI's very name reads differently.

For the industry, this is an early example of how a major lab planned to use an "open" release not to grow an ecosystem, but to suppress competition. Years later, open-weight models became a market norm, but the motive from the 2022 letter — control over who should even be allowed to enter the market — remains a relevant lens for reading corporate statements.

What This Means

The disclosed correspondence shows that "openness" in OpenAI's early strategy was largely a competitive tactic, not an end in itself. This is worth keeping in mind when evaluating any statements by AI labs about their own motives — public mission and internal calculations can diverge significantly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Sam Altman propose in the 2022 letter?

To release an open language model roughly at the level of GPT-3, running locally on consumer hardware, and to do it quickly — before Stability AI and other players.

As part of which case did the letter surface?

The letter dated October 1, 2022 became public in 2026 during the Musk v. Altman lawsuit — Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI.