Tech billionaire Elon Musk has announced that he will build a “truth-seeking AI” that will fight against politically correct information to counter the efforts of giants like Microsoft and Google with their artificial intelligence models.
During an interview with a US news agency, Musk said that AI has "the potential of civilizational destruction." He has maintained that the ChatGPT bot created by startup OpenAI is being taught to be politically correct.
"I'm going to start something which is called TruthGPT, or an absolute truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe," Musk said.
He reasoned that AI would see people as an interesting part of the universe and therefore choose not to "annihilate humans."
According to business documents reviewed by the news agencies, Musk has formed “X.AI,” an artificial intelligence corporation based in the US state of Nevada, and is listed as director of the company, which was founded on March 9.
Musk recently merged his company, Twitter, with a newly created "X" shell company, keeping the brand name for the platform but not the business.
Musk has bought thousands of powerful, costly computing processors and hired engineering talent as part of an AI project at Twitter, according to an Insider report. Meanwhile, Musk has slashed staff at Twitter as part of dramatic cost-cutting since his $44 billion takeover of the San Francisco firm late last year.
Musk's decision to start a rival company to counter Microsoft-backed OpenAI comes several weeks before he joined experts in signing an open letter urging a “pause” in the development of AI technology. The signatories argued that the pause should be used to bolster regulation and ensure AI systems are safe.
Critics, however, called the letter a "hot mess" of "AI hype" that misrepresented an academic paper.
Big tech companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft have spent years working on AI systems — previously known as machine learning or big data — to help with translations, search and targeted advertising.
Separately, Canada's public broadcaster CBC and its French-language version, Radio-Canada, said they were effectively quitting Twitter over a new "government-funded" label that it says questions its editorial independence.
The exit follows that of National Public Radio in the United States over the same tag, which had also been applied to the BBC before the British broadcaster successfully petitioned to have it changed to "publicly-funded."
In a statement, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada said Twitter had added a "government-funded media" label to its account, branding it the same way it does major media outlets in authoritarian countries such as Russia or China.
"In the case of CBC/Radio-Canada, this labeling is untrue and deceptive," the statement said.
While the broadcaster is publicly funded, its editorial independence is protected under Canadian broadcasting law, according to the statement.
"Twitter can be a powerful tool for our journalists to communicate with Canadians, but it undermines the accuracy and professionalism of the work they do to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way," it said.
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