Elon Musk announced on Monday that he will introduce a platform for artificial intelligence (AI) called “TruthGPT” to compete with Microsoft and Google’s products. He said this in an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
He accused OpenAI, the company behind the trending chatbot ChatGPT, which is supported by Microsoft, of “training the AI to lie” and said that OpenAI has since transformed into a “closed source,” “for-profit” organisation “closely allied with Microsoft.”
Musk stated that he wants TruthGPT because OpenAI’s ChatGPT is “being trained to be politically correct and lie to people”. He added that he intends to create an AI that “understands the universe”, because an AI that seeks the maximum truth and understands human civilization and the world in general, is unlikely to annihilate humanity.
Additionally, he charged Google co-founder Larry Page with not taking AI safety seriously. In an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired on Monday, Musk claimed, “I’m going to start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that seeks to comprehend the nature of the universe. TruthGPT, he claimed, “might be the best path to safety” and “unlikely to annihilate humans.”
BREAKING: @ElonMusk discusses creating an alternative to OpenAI, TruthGPT, because it is being trained to be politically correct and to lie to people. pic.twitter.com/HTFnve9o6d
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) April 18, 2023
“It’s only that it is starting late. But I’ll work to come up with a third choice,” Musk stated.
It is notable here that the primary reason for Elon Musk to take over Twitter, as per him, was that the social media giant was being misused as a Left-liberal propaganda machine that was working on choking free speech, rather than giving a platform for all voices to be heard.
Requests for comment were not immediately answered by Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft, or Page. According to people familiar with the situation, Musk has been stealing AI experts from Alphabet Inc.’s Google in order to found a company that will compete with OpenAI.
According to a state document, Musk registered a company called X.AI Corp, which was incorporated in Nevada last month. The company listed Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary and Musk as the only director.
The action was taken despite Musk and a group of industry leaders and specialists in artificial intelligence calling for a six-month moratorium on creating systems that are more potent than OpenAI’s recently released GPT-4, citing potential threats to society.
The portions from the conversation with Carlson show that Musk repeated his cautions about AI, stating that “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production.”
“It may end up destroying civilizations”, he warned.
He claimed, for instance, that an extremely intelligent AI could write astonishingly effectively and possibly sway public opinion. He tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former US President Barack Obama and advised him that Washington needed to “encourage AI regulation” when he was in office. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but he left the organization’s board of directors in 2018. He tweeted in 2019 that he had to concentrate on Tesla and SpaceX and had quit OpenAI.
In addition, he tweeted at the time, “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”
Also, Tesla was competing for some of same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do. Add that all up & it was just better to part ways on good terms.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2019
In addition to running Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is now in charge of Twitter, the social media giant he bought for $44 billion last year. Musk claimed in the Fox News interview that he recently valued Twitter at “less than half” of the acquisition cost. Microsoft Corp. announced another multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI in January, escalating competitor Google’s fight and igniting the race for AI financing in Silicon Valley.
