Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on Monday that he is launching a third-party AI platform called TruthGPT, which will rival offerings from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google. Criticizing OpenAI, Musk argued that the organization is a closed-source, for-profit company with close ties to Microsoft, and that it has a tendency to “train the AI to lie”. He also accused Google co-founder Larry Page of neglecting AI safety. Musk expressed excitement about launching a new AI that he believes “might be the best path to safety”, one that is “unlikely to annihilate humans”.
In addition to launching TruthGPT, Musk is also poaching AI researchers from Google in an effort to build a competing startup to OpenAI. He has already registered a business called X.AI Corp in Nevada, of which he is the sole director, and Jared Birchall of Musk’s family office is the secretary.
AI can be a dangerous tool and Musk has warned about its potential consequences, e.g., of a super intelligent AI manipulating public opinion. Along with a group of other AI experts and industry execs, he has suggested a pause of six months in the development of AI systems more advanced than OpenAI’s GPT-4, to mitigate the risk posed to society. He added that he had previously discussed the importance of AI regulation with former US president Barack Obama.
Finally, Musk revealed he currently values Twitter, which he purchased last year for $44 billion, at “less than half” of that price.
OpenAI is a nonprofit research organization founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, among others. The organization’s mission is to promote friendly AI to improve lives and generate economic growth, and to lead the development of friendly artificial general intelligence on a timescale that enables global progress. Currently, OpenAI is backed by Microsoft, which has made a multi-billion investment.
Elon Musk is a South African-born entrepreneur and investor, widely known for founding and leading Tesla, SpaceX, and other companies. He is currently CEO of Tesla, Inc., and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., and executive chairman of Neuralink, an AI research and development firm focusing on creating a brain-machine interface. He is also the founder of The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company, and OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory. Musk has also become a media mogul, buying Twitter for $44 billion in 2021.
