Elon Musk wrote on August 14, 2020, that the improvement speed from the initial GPT to GPT-3 is impressive. If this speed continues, GPT-5 or GPT-6 might be indistinguishable from the smartest humans. He immediately clarified that this is just a personal opinion, not an endorsement.

In the same post, he positioned himself as a neutral outsider. His exact words were that he left OpenAI two to three years ago and is no longer on the inside. Public records show he resigned from the OpenAI board in February 2018, reportedly due to differences in company direction and potential conflicts of interest with Tesla's AI business. OpenAI was co-founded by him in 2015 with his funding. At the time of the post, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman were already managing an organization different from the one he left.

The timing was right after GPT-3 had a limited release. At that time, OpenAI had not yet established the subsequent naming rhythm. The gap between GPT-3 and GPT-4 was about two and a half years. He did not provide testing standards or specify whether "indistinguishable" referred to conversation, exams, or work. The sentence only set one condition: the improvement speed remains unchanged.

This statement did not involve funding or price predictions. By 2026, OpenAI had released GPT-6 Astra. Musk later founded xAI and repeatedly referred to Grok 5 as general artificial intelligence or indistinguishable, without providing actionable thresholds. The phrase "neutral outsider" did not continue to reflect his later position.

The post was a reply, not a press release. The focus was on the generational gap of OpenAI, with the speaker emphasizing that he had left. The event was driven by the limited visibility of GPT-3's capabilities. The beneficiaries were readers who extrapolated expectations based on speed. The pressure was on OpenAI, which he excluded from endorsement, and anyone who took a single opinion as a roadmap.

This is not a transaction. There were no buyers, sellers, or deliveries. No funds flowed because of this statement. It was later repeatedly quoted because the naming coincidentally reached GPT-5 and GPT-6. The quote does not change the two limitations in the original sentence: it is just an opinion, and the speed must continue.

Source: Public information