Elon Musk launches xAI firm to take on OpenAI

Elon Musk, the billionaire, launched his artificial intelligence startup xAI on Wednesday, unveiling a team made up of engineers from the same big US tech companies he hopes to challenge in his bid to build an alternative to ChatGPT.

The startup will be led by Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla, CEO of rocket launcher SpaceX and owner of Twitter, who has said on several occasions that the development of artificial intelligence should be paused and that the sector needs to be regulated. Musk has repeatedly expressed concerns about the possibility of AI “destroying civilization”.

At a Twitter Spaces event on Wednesday night, Musk outlined his plan to build safer AI. Rather than explicitly programming morality into its AI, he said, xAI will seek to create “extremely curious” AIs.

“If I try to understand the true nature of the universe, that’s actually the best thing I can come up with from an AI security point of view,” Musk said. “I think he would be pro-humanist from the point of view that humanity is more interesting than non-humanity.”

Musk also predicted that superintelligence, or artificial intelligence more intelligent than humans, would arrive in five or six years.

Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in 2015, but stepped down from the company’s board of directors in 2018.

Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI.

Website xAI said it will hold a Twitter Spaces event on July 14th.

The team at xAI includes Igor Babushkin, a former engineer at Google’s DeepMind; Tony Wu, who worked at Google; Christian Zigde, who was also a Google researcher; and Greg Yang, formerly of Microsoft.

Musk in March registered a company named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a government filing. The company lists Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, managing director of the Musk family office, as secretary.

Musk had said in April that he would launch TruthGPT, or maximum truth-seeking artificial intelligence to rival Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI trying to understand the nature of the universe.

is reading: Google unveils ChatGPT competitor Bard and plans AI search in battle with Microsoft

Generative AI took the limelight with OpenAI’s launch of its popular chatbot, ChatGPT, which came in November last year, ahead of the launch of Bard and Bing AI.

Dan Hendricks, who will advise the xAI team, is currently the director of the Center for AI Security and his work revolves around AI risks.

Musk’s new company is separate from X Corp, but will work closely with Twitter, Tesla and other companies, according to the site.

xAI said it is recruiting experienced engineers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area.