Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has announced his plan to create a third option that will compete with Microsoft and Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, citing concerns of “civilizational destruction” from the technology without proper regulation.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk criticized OpenAI’s ChatGPT of being “biased” and “trained to be politically correct, which is simply another way of being untruthful, saying untruthful things.”
With the establishment of his new venture X.AI Corp, Musk aims to develop a non-partisan AI that seeks “maximum truth,” which he believes will be less likely to annihilate humankind since “we [humans] are an interesting part of the universe.”
Echoing sentiments of hundreds of tech and science experts, Musk has called for a six-month pause in AI development to put “controls in place,” as the technology is projected to surpass human capabilities and pose “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Musk, who joined OpenAI in 2015 and left its board in 2018, highlights the need for the government to step in and regulate the industry to prevent AI from taking over.
Lamenting the absence of a national discussion on AI and the lack of regulatory oversight, he warns, “AI is far more dangerous than nukes”. Musk’s comments have raised further doubts about the safety of AI technology and prompted stakeholders to scrutinize competitors’ AI projects’ political neutrality and truthfulness.
So far, Microsoft and Google have invested billions in developing ChatGPT and OpenAI, respectively, as they compete to take the lead in AI technology. With his newly-announced venture, Musk’s efforts to innovate AI and bring a “maximum truth” AI platform could lead to significant improvements in the technology’s safety and usefulness.
