On Monday, tech billionaire and Twitter owner Elon Musk took aim at Microsoft-backed OpenAI chatbot sensation ChatGPT for what he believes is a liberal bias. Musk then proposed forming a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture called “TruthGPT” to rival OpenAI and a possible solution to the dangers posed by AI to humanity.
The South African-born entrepreneur revealed the plans during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, criticizing OpenAI for becoming a “closed source, for-profit” organization with a close relationship with Microsoft. Furthermore, Musk accused Larry Page, Google co-founder, of not taking AI safety seriously. His intention with “TruthGPT” is to create a third AI option that is more preoccupied with understanding humanity and as a result, unlikely to annihilate it.
Additionally, Musk commented that ChatGPT is “being trained to be politically correct”, and further expressed his worries. Headed by Musk, the new venture named X.AI Corp. was incorporated in Nevada on March 9, 2021.
Interestingly, the idea for TruthGPT is arriving after Musk and a number of Artificial Intelligence experts and corporate executives called for a 6-month delay in the development of AIs more superior than OpenAI’s GPT-4, for fear of potential risks to society. Regarding the move, Musk has expressed his opinion towards possible harms of AI for a long time, which has earned him disdain from Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other tech leaders as he believes their understanding of AI is limited.
He also criticised OpenAI for its venture for not being a “non-profit” AI research lab. When he resigned in 2018, OpenAI attributed the move to Tesla’s endeavours in automated driving creation and the competition over human resources.
With TruthGPT, Musk looks to create a new direction while he continues to develop AI technologies at Tesla. He seems unbothered by the US National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into a fatal crash, linking to Tesla’s Autopilot system.
X.AI Corp, with Musk as director and long time advisor Jared Birchall as secretary, looks to challenge OpenAI with a bias-free, comprehensive AI system and as a potential solution to maintaining humanity.
