Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has recently announced plans to create a new AI-related project that may take on ChatGPT – an existing artificial intelligence system. Musk’s new venture is called X.AI and is registered in Nevada under his name only. He has been in talks with long-time investors of SpaceX and Tesla to fund the AI project. Recently, he also hired two engineers, Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss, with very sound Advanced AI experience.
These actions come afteer the criticisms Musk has publiclly voiced about AI and its potential risks. This has not stopped Musk from reportedly buying several thousands of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) for his project. Moreover, Musk has changed the name of his Twitter to X Corp, signifying a movement towards — what he referred to as  ”an everything app” under the umbrella of “X”.
OpenAI, a company that he co-founded in 2015 with its current CEO, Sam Altman, was one of Musk’s first big steps in the field of AI development. It is through this experience he has been able to continue his journey towards building a powerful Artificial Intelligence platform.
X.AI will be a potential challenge to existing AI systems such as the DeepMind, a subsidiary of the Google parent company Alphabet. It will also place Musk among other tech giants such as Microsoft and Google who are also attempting to build their own next-generation AI.
This news follows after an open letter he signed along with thousands of other researchers, calling for a temporary halt on AI development due to potential risks to humanity. Regulators, as well, have been warned by Musk in 2017 to take AI research seriously and to regulate it before it is too late.
One can only hope that with the addition of this new venture, Musk continues to take all necessary ethical considerations in his development of AI, balancing the desire for innovation with the assurance of human welfare.
