Elon Musk’s call to slow AI progress is a catch-up tactic: VC founder says

• Elon Musk has bought 10,000 GPUs to build AI models on Twitter, insiders report.
• That came shortly after he signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on powerful AI development.
• According to Bloomberg, one VC founder said he suspects Musk is just trying to keep up with the competition.

Elon Musk’s call to slow down AI development could be just a ruse to help him catch up, tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told Bloomberg.

Twitter’s CEO was one of more than 1,000 people to sign an open letter in March, warning that AI companies were “engaged in an out-of-control race” and demanding stronger development for six months. asked to stop.

Earlier this week, Musk endorsed “the godfather of AI” Jeffrey Hinton, who quit Google and told The New York Times about his regrets for creating technology that could threaten humanity.

Khosla, however, suspects Musk is only speaking out to gain a competitive edge.

“Elon is late,” he told Bloomberg. “I’m 80% suspicious that he tried to slow his AI development so he could catch up.”

Last month, Insider Kali Hays reported that Musk had purchased around 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) for Twitter. Technology companies often use GPUs to process large AI models.

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI. This is the company behind his ChatGPT, widely considered to be leading the new boom in AI technology. However, Musk resigned in 2018 after co-founders, including Sam Altman, rejected his offer to take over the business, Semaphore reported.

Musk reportedly feared OpenAI was lagging behind Google in the race for new developments, and believed Tesla would likely achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI). .

According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk called him a “jackass” when an OpenAI intern questioned the decision.

However, even before Mus took over Twitter, he was warning about AI threats.

At a 2016 conference, he said humans could become AI’s “house cats,” suggesting that Neuralink-like implants would be needed to combat it.

The insider reached out to Twitter for comment. The company responded with an automated message not responding to inquiries.