The AI Chatbot feud continues

GBM Insights

• Elon Musk announced that he will also be entering the AI chatbot race and will launch a program to directly compete with ChatGPT.
• Elon aims to launch TruthGPT, an AI chatbot which aims to see the maximum truth.
• Elon has also raised concerns about ChatGPT’s legitimacy and accused Google of not taking AI security seriously.

Not just another chatbot

Elon Musk continues his journey to become one of the most influential being on the planet. From revolutionising the automobile industry, to making space exploration affordable and now taking over Twitter, Elon Musk wants to enter the AI chatbot industry too. He has his  eyes set on an all new venture, and directly wants to compete with Microsoft and Google by launching a brand new AI chatbot.

On Monday, Elon Musk made an announcement about his plans to create a new AI platform, called TruthGPT, to rival the existing platforms from Microsoft and Google. Musk also took a shot at OpenAI, the firm behind the chatbot ChatGPT, which is backed by Microsoft, for training the AI to lie. According to Musk, OpenAI has now become a closed source, for-profit organization closely aligned with Microsoft. Musk also accused Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, of not taking AI safety seriously.

In an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, Musk explained that the aim of TruthGPT is to create a maximum truth-seeking AI that seeks to understand the universe’s nature. Musk believes that this approach will lead to safety because an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans since humans are an interesting part of the universe.

Musk has been poaching AI researchers from Google to start a new company to rival OpenAI. He recently registered a company called X.AI Corp in Nevada, with himself as the only director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as the secretary.

In the interview with Carlson, Musk reiterated his warnings about the dangers of AI and said that AI has the potential for civilizational destruction. He also expressed concern that a super-intelligent AI could write incredibly well and potentially manipulate public opinions.

Musk has been vocal about the need for AI regulation and tweeted over the weekend that he had met with former US President Barack Obama and told him that Washington needed to encourage AI regulation.

Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but stepped down from the company’s board in 2018. He also became the CEO of Twitter after buying the social media platform for $44 billion last year. In the interview with Fox News, Musk revealed that he recently valued Twitter at less than half of the acquisition price.

In January, Microsoft announced a multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, intensifying the competition with rival Google and fuelling the race to attract AI funding in Silicon Valley. However, Musk and a group of AI experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society.