Billionaire Elon Musk announced Wednesday that he has hired researchers from Google, OpenAI and other top tech companies to form a new artificial intelligence company called xAI. Musk tweeted that his goal is to “understand reality.”
According to the new company’s website, xAI is a separate entity from Musk’s other businesses, including Tesla and Twitter, but will work closely together.
Given that Tesla uses AI technology in its vehicles, Musk is no novice to AI. While xAI did not disclose what projects it will work on, the company noted that the team of 11 researchers was drawn from top technology companies such as Microsoft Research, DeepMind, OpenAI and Google.
Musk hinted that the reason for choosing July 12, 2023 for the xAI debut announcement is related to the sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. In a tweet, he said that the dates of July 12th and 23rd add up to 42, and his novel famously assumes that this is the answer to his life.
“The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe,” states the xAI website.
The company said it would take advice from Dan Hendricks, director of the AI Safety Center. His group said in May that the AI ”danger of extinction“To humanity on the scale of a nuclear war or a pandemic.
In an email to CBS News, Hendricks pointed out where the AI could go wrong.
“AI could be used by bad actors to design new bioweapons more deadly than natural pandemics,” Hendricks wrote in May. “Alternatively, a malicious attacker could intentionally release a rogue AI that actively seeks to harm humanity. , can pose a significant risk to society as a whole.”
“Truth seeking AI”
The public launch of xAI follows comments Musk made to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in April. Musk told Carlson that OpenAI’s popular chatbot has a liberal bias and plans to develop an alternative tool that will be “a maximal truth-seeking AI trying to understand the nature of the universe.” rice field.
The startup reflected Musk’s longstanding concerns about a future in which AI systems could pose an existential risk to humanity.
Musk also told Carlson he doesn’t think an AI that tries to understand humanity is likely to destroy them. Musk was one of the tech leaders who earlier this year called on AI developers to agree to a six-month pause before building systems more powerful than OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4. Around the same time, he was already working on his own AI company, according to Nevada business records.
—According to a report by the Associated Press.
