Tech billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been one of the personalities at the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) race.
The new company, known as xAI, reportedly uses data taken from users from X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as real-world images captured by Tesla's Full Self-Driving system. This means that the billionaire entrepreneur would be capable of creating ChatGPT-style AI chatbots and physical robots that can navigate the real world.
Elon Musk's New AI Company
But in Musk's version of events, expressed during an interview with acclaimed journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, he claims that he had recently realized that he was spending too much of his focus and time on Twitter.
Musk said he contemplated a not-too-distant future where intelligence machines will make humans obsolete. This is something that sci-fi writers refer to as "the singularity," and the billionaire entrepreneur said that he realized he could not just sit around and not do anything, as per Gizmodo.
When talking about the singularity, Musk said that it could happen sooner than anyone could have expected. That fear supposedly led the billionaire entrepreneur to launch xAI, which he claims is focused on AI safety.
The new company recruited top talent, including former Deepmind research engineer Igor Babuschkin. A Time report noted that in the near term, Musk had instructed xAI researchers to work on creating artificial intelligence capable of generating computer code and a "politically neutral" chatbot competitor to ChatGPT.
In its long-term vision, the company's website said its goal was to "understand the true nature of the universe." Previously, the billionaire entrepreneur worked on AI safety at OpenAI but later cut ties with the company after it received investment from Microsoft.
Musk's focus on artificial intelligence also comes after he reassured the public that his AI companies, including Tesla and Neuralink, will not use direct messages (DMs) or private user data to train their AI models, according to The Logical Indian.
Focus on AI Safety
The remarks come with mounting concerns over data privacy and AI ethics, which underscore the commitment to safeguarding user information and respecting privacy boundaries.
The billionaire entrepreneur's statements came in tweets after concerned users and observers posted queries about the situation. Musk addressed the growing apprehensions about using users' data in training AI models. This particular practice has, for years, raised ethical questions.
Musk's new AI company comes as Neuralink was able to raise $280 million in a fundraising round announced early last month. The Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based VC firm Peter Thiel established, led the Series D round.
The brain chip startup company said it wants to use implants to connect the human brain to a computer, a goal that Musk has been working on for the past five years. However, Neuralink has so far only tested on animals and has already faced scrutiny following the death of a monkey during a project testing in 2022 in trying to have the creature play Pong, said CNN.
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