...believes his approach is the best path to ensuring safety for humans.
Elon Musk on Monday offered new details into the purported launch of his artificial intelligence (AI) platform that he calls “TruthGPT”, which is meant to rival competitors Microsoft and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard
“I’m going to start something which I call ‘Truth GPT’ or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said Monday evening during an interview on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight.
“TruthGPT might be the best path to safety, in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe, is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe.”
Elon Musk
While accusing Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously, the billionaire also criticised Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm he co-founded in 2015 which is behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, of “training the AI to lie” and said OpenAI has now become a “closed source”, “for-profit” organisation “closely allied with Microsoft”.
“It’s simply starting late. But I will try to create a third option,” He added.
Although not certain and clear about its nature then, we recall that the billionaire’s first mention of the AI platform was in February this year via a tweet. In criticism of the AI chatbot trend, Musk noted that what was needed was a truth-telling platform.
The move is coming after a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives, including Musk, had signed an open letter urging labs to take at least a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.
Elon Musk’s latest AI move
Musk’s debut into the expanding AI business follows the November introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The chatbot, powered by a potent AI engine, can create code, have conversations, and write articles based on knowledge generated from aggregated sources.
In response, Microsoft swiftly extended its collaboration with OpenAI and included the technology in its Bing search engine. To compete, Google unveiled Bard, its own AI chatbot, but it initially had some issues at its unveiling.
But then, Musk, in his attempt to launch a rival AI platform, poached AI researchers from Alphabet Inc’s Google.
Recall that last week, we reported that Musk had last month registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. The firm listed Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary.
Musk did not, however, state the date for the rollout of the AI truth-telling platform in the interview. Hence, it is unclear if Musk has actually recruited anyone to start working on his AI tool, and it is also unknown if it will actually be called “TruthGPT” or if that is simply a placeholder.
However, reiterating his warnings about AI, he further adds in the interview with Carlson 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 of civilizational destruction,”
Elon Musk
He said, for example, that a super-intelligent AI can write incredibly well and potentially manipulate public opinions. He tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former U.S. President Barack Obama when he was president and told him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation”.
He also tweeted at that time that other reasons for his departure from OpenAI were, “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”