Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, made headlines as he officially launched his highly anticipated artificial intelligence startup, xAI. With a team comprising engineers from major US technology firms, Musk aims to challenge existing AI models such as ChatGPT and develop a viable alternative.
As the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, Musk has been vocal about the need for regulation and a cautious approach to AI development. He has expressed concerns about the potential destructive power of AI, referring to it as a threat to civilization.
During a Twitter Spaces event held on Wednesday, Musk shared his vision for building a safer AI. Instead of explicitly programming morality, xAI will focus on creating an AI that is “maximally curious.” Musk explained that an AI driven to understand the true nature of the universe would be the best approach for ensuring safety, stating, “Humanity is just much more interesting than not-humanity.”
Musk also made a bold prediction, stating that superintelligence, AI that surpasses human intelligence, could be a reality within the next five to six years.
It is worth noting that Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, in 2015, but stepped down from the board in 2018. Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI. The xAI website announced a Twitter Spaces event scheduled for July 14.
The xAI team boasts notable talent, including Igor Babuschkin, a former engineer at Google’s DeepMind; Tony Wu, who previously worked at Google; Christian Szegedy, a research scientist at Google; and Greg Yang, formerly of Microsoft.
In March, Musk registered a new company named X.AI Corp, with himself as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, serving as secretary. Musk had previously mentioned his plans to launch TruthGPT, an AI model focused on seeking maximum truth, rivaling Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, which aim to understand the nature of the universe.
Generative AI gained significant attention with the launch of OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT, in November of the previous year, preceding Bard and Bing AI.
Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, will provide advice to the xAI team, leveraging his expertise in AI risk assessment.
Musk’s new venture, xAI, operates independently from X Corp but maintains close collaboration with Twitter, Tesla, and other companies. The company is actively recruiting experienced engineers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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