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SAN FRANCISCO, CA: Elon Musk, the billionaire, announced on Monday that he will build an artificial intelligence (AI) platform called “TruthGPT” to compete with Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) products.
He accused Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of “training the AI to lie,” and said that OpenAI has now evolved into a “closed source,” “for-profit” organization “closely allied with Microsoft.”
He also accused Google co-founder Larry Page of not taking AI safety seriously.
“I’m going to start something I call ‘TruthGPT,’ or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk stated in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel on Monday.
He stated that TruthGPT “might be the best path to safety” because it is “unlikely to annihilate humans.”
“It’s just that it’s starting late.” But I’ll attempt to come up with a third solution,” Musk stated.
Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Page did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
According to people familiar with the subject, Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google in order to build a firm that will compete with OpenAI.
According to a state document, Musk created a company called X.AI Corp in Nevada last month. Musk was designated as the sole director, with Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, serving as secretary.
Civilization destruction
The move comes despite Musk and a group of artificial intelligence researchers and industry leaders calling for a six-month moratorium on constructing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s recently debuted GPT-4, citing potential societal hazards.
During the discussion with Carlson, Musk again restated his worries about AI, claiming that “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production,” according to the excerpts.
“It has the potential to destroy civilization,” he added.
For example, he stated that a super-intelligent AI can write extremely well and potentially sway public opinion.
Over the weekend, he tweeted that he spoke with former President Barack Obama and advised him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation.”
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he left the company’s board of directors in 2018. In 2019, he stated that he was leaving OpenAI to work at Tesla and SpaceX.
He also stated on Twitter at the time that “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what the OpenAI team wanted to do.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also taken over as CEO of Twitter, which he purchased for $44 billion last year.
Musk told Fox News that he recently valued Twitter at “less than half” of the acquisition price.
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) announced a new multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI in January, increasing competition with rival Google and fueling the battle for AI funding in Silicon Valley.
