Twitter creates AI project despite Musk asking for a break – 04/12/2023 – Tech

Elon Musk is moving forward with an AI (artificial intelligence) project at Twitter, despite recently calling for a general pause in technology development, US media reported.

The billionaire bought thousands of powerful and expensive processors and hired AI engineering specialists, according to the Insider portal. Information, another site specializing in technology, said that the businessman is considering the idea of ​​creating a competitor to ChatGPT.

At the same time, Musk has laid off Twitter employees as part of a massive cost cut since he bought the company last year for $44 billion.

The news was reported by Insider two weeks after Musk signed a letter with several experts to call for a pause in AI development.

The open letter, published on the website of the Future of Life Institute, founded by Musk, called for a six-month pause in the development of powerful AI systems.

Tesla’s billionaire owner and several scientists wrote that “AI systems that compete with human intelligence could pose profound risks to society and humanity.”

The signatories, which included academics and big tech names like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, argued that the pause should be used to tighten regulation and ensure the security of systems.

Musk’s fledgling AI project for Twitter, according to Insider, involves training a language model to create written content.

Big tech groups like Google, Meta and Microsoft have spent years working on AI systems, but late last year, San Francisco-based company OpenAI sparked huge interest in the technology by releasing ChatGPT, a chatbot that generates text in natural language from simple instructions.

Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI, but left the company in 2018. Since then, Microsoft has announced that it will invest billions of dollars in OpenAI and that it will use the technology in its Bing search engine.