Elon Musk has recently created a stir in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with his announcement of a plan to launch a competing platform to rival Microsoft-backed OpenAI and their popular chatbot ChatGPT. He has spoken out against OpenAI, accusing them of “training the AI to lie” and of becoming a “closed source, for profit organisation” that partners with Microsoft. Furthermore, he has accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously. In response to this, Musk has stated that he is creating a “maximum truth-seeking AI” called “TruthGPT”, which will strive to understand the universe and, in Musk’s opinion, is less likely to harm humans as a result.
However, OpenAI, Page and Musk himself have not immediately responded to requests from Reuters for comment over these accusations. Musk has taken measures to launch a startup to compete with OpenAI, such as poached AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s Google, and has incorporated a firm named X.AI Corp in Nevada, with Musk listed as its sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as its secretary.
Musk also made controversial statements during his interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, in which he claimed “AI is more dangerous than mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production”, continuing by saying “It has the potential of civilizational destruction.” As a result, Musk and a group of other AI experts and business executives have called for a six-month pause in developing systems that are more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4. He has even stated that he informed former US President Barack Obama of the danger of AI, and how Washington needs to encourage regulations in the field.
In an interesting twist, Musk recently sold Twitter, which he had purchased for $44 billion last year, for “less than half” of that price.
Company: OpenAI is a for-profit research laboratory, who focus on advancing digital intelligence in the form of artificial general intelligence. They were funded by Microsoft and co-founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, though he has since stepped down from the company’s board in 2018, culminating in Musk’s statement that he left OpenAI to focus on Tesla and SpaceX.
Person: Elon Musk is a famous South-African born business magnate, investor, engineer and inventor. He is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO and chairman of Tesla, Inc; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He has also become the CEO of Twitter after purchasing the company for $44 billion last year, yet he recently sold it at “less than half” of the purchase price. He has been outspoken about the dangers of artificial intelligence, causing a group of experts and businesses to call for a six-month pause on developing AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s most recent release, GPT-4.
