Musk says he’s working on an AI that ‘seeks the truth’ – 04/18/2023 – Tech

Elon Musk seeks to counter AI efforts by Microsoft and Google with “an AI that seeks the truth” and shuns political correctness, he said in an interview aired on Monday.

The billionaire, owner of Twitter and Tesla, has again expressed concern about the danger of artificial intelligence (AI), saying it has “the potential to destroy civilization”.

He added that he is concerned that ChatGPT, created by startup OpenAI, is being taught to be politically correct.

“I’m going to release something called TruthGPT, or an AI that seeks absolute truth and tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said.

AI would see people as an interesting part of the universe and decide not to “annihilate humans”, according to Musk.

The billionaire created an artificial intelligence corporation X.AI, based in the US state of Nevada, according to company documents.

It recently merged Twitter with a newly created shell company “X” and kept the brand name for the platform but not the business.

Musk founded an OpenAI rival company several weeks before joining experts who signed an open letter calling for a general pause in the development of AI technology.

Signatories argued that the pause should serve to strengthen regulation and ensure the safety of AI systems.

Big tech companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft have been working for years on AI systems, formerly known as machine learning or big data, to help with translations, searches and targeted advertising.

At the end of last year, OpenAI sparked interest in artificial intelligence with the launch of ChatGPT, capable of generating text from a short question.

Musk co-founded OpenAI but left the company in 2018.

Microsoft has since announced it is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI and putting its technology to work on its online search service Bing.