Elon Musk announced that he will launch an artificial intelligence (AI) platform called “TruthGPT” as a challenge to ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, during an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, which will be aired later on Monday (Apr 18).
Elon Musk stated that TruthGPT would be a maximum truth-seeking AI that aims to understand the nature of the universe and suggested that it could be the best path to safety since an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of it.
Reuters’ request for comment has not received an immediate response from Musk.
Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Alphabet’s Google to launch a startup to rival OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Musk 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
“CIVILISATIONAL DESTRUCTION”
The move came even after Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.
Musk also reiterated his warnings about AI during the interview with Carlson, saying “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 civilisational destruction,” he said.
He tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former US President Barack Obama when he was president and told him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation”.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he stepped down from the company’s board in 2018. In 2019, he tweeted that he left OpenAI because he had to focus on Tesla and SpaceX.
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.”
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has also become CEO of Twitter, a social media platform he bought for US$44 billion last year.
In January, Microsoft Corp announced a further multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, intensifying competition with rival Google and fueling the race to attract AI funding in Silicon Valley.