Elon Musk claims he will develop “TruthGPT” to combat AI bias.
A popular chatbot, according to billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk, has a leftist bent, which he aims to offset with his own AI creation. Musk is once again raising alarms about the risks that artificial intelligence poses to humans.
In an interview with Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that aired Monday night, Musk revealed his plans to develop “TruthGPT,” a replacement for the well-known AI chatbot ChatGPT that will be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”
According to Musk, an AI that seeks to comprehend humanity is less likely to end it.
Musk also said he’s worried that ChatGPT “is being trained to be politically correct.”
Musk also spoke in favour of AI legislation in the first of a two-part interview with Carlson, calling himself a “big fan.” He referred to AI as “more dangerous” than vehicles or rockets and claimed it may wipe out humans.
Separately, a Nevada business registration indicates that Musk has incorporated a new company called X.AI Corp. According to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office website, the company was established on March 9. Musk is listed as its director, while Jared Birchall, a trusted advisor, is listed as its secretary.
For many years, Musk has been vocal about his views on artificial intelligence and has criticised other industry titans, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, for having what he has called a “limited” grasp of the subject.
Musk co-chaired the board of OpenAI, the startup that created ChatGPT, and was an early investment in the company. OpenAI was established in 2015 as a nonprofit AI research centre. But Musk only remained there for a short time, leaving the board in the first quarter of 2018, which the San Francisco startup attributed to Tesla’s efforts to develop automated driving technologies. According to a February 2018 blog post by OpenAI, “as Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon.”
“I came up with the name and the concept,” Musk told Carlson, lamenting that OpenAI is now closely allied with Microsoft and is no longer a nonprofit.
Musk went into further detail about his leaving in 2019, claiming that it was also due to his need to concentrate on engineering issues at Tesla and some disagreements with OpenAI’s leaders.
It was “just better to part ways on good terms,” he said.
“Tesla was competing for some of same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do,” Musk tweeted, without specifying.
However, there have been concerns raised about Tesla’s AI systems. The inquiry into a tragic collision involving a Tesla, which is thought to have been utilising an automatic driving system when it collided with a parked firetruck in California, was announced by US safety officials last month.
The agency’s inquiry into various incidents of Teslas utilising the automaker’s Autopilot technology colliding with stationary emergency vehicles tending to other wrecks includes the firetruck. In the past year, the NHTSA has increased its vigilance in pursuing Tesla safety issues, announcing numerous recalls and investigations.
Despite being far from working on ChatGPT in the year following Musk’s resignation from the board, OpenAI publicly announced the initial version of their GPT system, the foundation of which is ChatGPT, and started a significant shift to incorporate itself as a for-profit organisation.
By 2020, Musk was tweeting that “OpenAI should be more open” while noting that he had “no control & only very limited insight” into it.
He’s been complimentary at times. Musk tweeted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that ChatGPT is “scary good” in the days following its release on 30 November and bemoaned the lack of widespread media coverage since “ChatGPT is not a far left cause.”
But since then, Musk has often cited instances that he claims demonstrate left-wing bias or censorship. ChatGPT, like other chatbots, includes filters that work to keep it from spitting out harmful or unpleasant responses.