Billionaire Elon Musk has plans to launch an artificial intelligence startup that directly rivals ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, reports the Financial Times. According to the people familiar with Musk’s plans, the ambitious entrepreneur is assembling a team of AI experts and engineers, and he is also having conversations with his Tesla and SpaceX investors about investing in the venture.
The emergence of Musk’s plans is simultaneously accompanied by a call from a group of AI researchers and executives, including Musk himself, for a six-month moratorium on developing AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4. It is hoped that this pause may help address potential societal risks posed by increasingly powerful AI.
Leading tech companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet, and others are currently in search of ways to integrate the technology behind ChatGPT into their services. Nevertheless, there is also a strong pushback to the potential of wide adoption, as regulators are advocating for an array of appropriate rules before ChatGPT becomes more widely used. Aside from Italy banning the technology due to privacy concerns, the European privacy watchdog has even begun a task force to create a shared policy on AI.
Additionally, Musk has reportedly secured thousands of graphics processor units, computing products necessary for AI and graphical projects, from Nvidia. Although Nvidia refused to confirm any details, their stocks saw a slight increase after the news broke.
These precise plans of Musk’s are yet still to be revealed, though it is expected that there will be stiff competition in the race to finding the best way to explore AI’s limitless potentialities.
OpenAI is a nonprofit organization co-founded by Elon Musk in 2015. He departed from the company’s board in 2018.
