Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been warning about the potential risks of artificial intelligence (AI). He recently posted on Twitter that he is working on an alternative to OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT called ‘TruthGPT’, which will be a “maximum truth-seeking AI” to try and “understand the nature of the universe” and potentially protect humans from the risk of AI-driven annihilation.
The multibillionaire went on to criticise OpenAI for training their AI ChatGPT “to lie” and turning into a “closed source”, “for-profit” organisation that is “closely allied with Microsoft”. He also accused Google co-funder Larry Page of failing to take AI seriously, supporting an open letter signed last month by AI industry leaders including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, which called for a pause in development of AI technologies due to their potential risks to society.
In addition to all these initiatives, Musk is also reported to be working silently on an AI project at Twitter. According to an insider report, the Tesla titan has already poached two AI scientists from firms such as DeepMind, and has invested in 10,000 graphics processing units for the company. This could most likely be linked to the technology entrepreneurs new start-up named X.AI, last month incorporated in Nevada.
Aside from all the awareness that Musk has raised about AI, he also believes AI development is still very dangerous and could “potentially lead to civilizational destruction”. He said in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, “AI is more dangerous than say mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production”.
Elon Musk is the billionaire founder of Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, and is the 33rd wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Over the years, he has been advocating for advanced technology development, often encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations and breakthroughs. With the introduction of a ‘maximum truth-seeking AI’ called ‘TruthGPT’, Musk is aiming to make the world safer from AI technology while simultaneously leading scientific progress in the field.
