Tech billionaire Elon Musk plans to challenge the industry’s current leaders, Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, with his new generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform called TruthGPT. In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, Musk expressed his aspiration to create a platform that is focused on “understanding the nature of the universe” and is unlikely to “annihilate humans”.
The endeavor has been long in the pipeline for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and has gained traction since reports of Musk assembling a team, which includes a former engineer at a unit of Google’s parent Alphabet, to develop a rival to ChatGPT. The venture, as reported by Financial Times, has also seen discussion with investors in other Musk-owned companies and orders for thousands of high-powered GPUs (graphic processing units) from tech firm Nvidia.
In Nevada, Musk has registered a company named X.AI Corp, with the ambition of creating a generative AI that can produce diverse kinds of data, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, 3D objects, and videos. Although it draws inspiration from existing data, generative AI is also capable of producing fresh and unexpected outputs.
The global generative AI market is estimated to reach $188.62 billion by 2032, with an expansive annual growth rate of 36%. Investment in generative AI start-ups has been intensified in the past few years, with capitalists pouring in over $4.2 billion and 215 deals in 2021 and 2022. $586 million was invested in 20 deals for generative interfaces.
Mr Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, left the board of the California-based start-up in 2018 over disagreements with its direction. In 2019, he clarified that his prior engagement in the venture was due to his commitments to Tesla and SpaceX. Furthermore, the tech-mogul emphasized the need for OpenAI to alleviate the “safety nets” and restrictions on ChatGPT.
Google, on the other hand, just released their conversational AI platform Bard, only to be marred by human error and technological glitches during a company event in Paris. These complications caused investors to drop $100 billion off Google’s market value.
The urgency and necessity for AI safety is something that Elon Musk has long advocated for. In the interview with Tucker Carlson, he further emphasized the need “to find a way of achieving the safety, not just the efficiency, of AI”.
In regards to the person mentioned in the article, Elon Musk can be described in many ways. He is the second-wealthiest individual in the world and the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and OpenAI. Born in South Africa, he spent most of his childhood in Canada before he established Zip2 and X.com, which later merged with the online payment platform PayPal. Musk has raised several ventures in aerospace engineering and space travel and has made numerous contributions to the tech industry with products such as artificial intelligence, solar energy, battery storage and electric vehicles.
As for the companies mentioned in the article, Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and has since then become the leading multinational technology company in the world, creating products such as Windows – the most popular operating system for computers – and Office, a suite of services suchas Outlook, Exchange and Skype. Google, another of the world’s largest tech companies, was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their other subsidiary companies include Alphabet, Android, YouTube and Nest. OpenAI, which the above article focuses on, was created by Elon Musk in 2015 and is the world’s most valued AI start-up. It is a research laboratory for artificial intelligence built upon the concept of a safe and responsible AI. Last but not least, Nvidia is an American technology company specializing in graphics processing units (GPUs).
