Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and owner of Twitter, has officially launched his much-anticipated artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI. Musk, who has frequently voiced concerns about AI’s potential for “civilizational destruction,” envisions xAI as an alternative to existing AI solutions like ChatGPT. The team behind xAI comprises engineers from prominent tech firms, including Google’s DeepMind and Microsoft.
Rather than programming explicit morality, Musk proposes to create a “maximally curious” AI that aims to understand the true nature of the universe, which he argues is an optimal approach from an AI safety perspective. He anticipates superintelligence, AI that outperforms human intelligence, will emerge within the next five to six years.
Musk co-founded OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in 2015 but left the board in 2018. Now, his new venture, xAI, plans to compete with OpenAI, Google, and other AI companies. Key team members of xAI include Igor Babuschkin, formerly of DeepMind, Tony Wu and Christian Szegedy, ex-Googlers, and Greg Yang, previously at Microsoft. xAI is led by Musk and advised by Dan Hendrycks, the current director of the Center for AI Safety.
xAI aims to develop the “mathematics of deep learning” and a “theory of everything” for large neural networks. Musk had also hinted at a new AI tool called “TruthGPT,” a truth-seeking AI designed to rival Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI.
The company, registered as X.AI Corp in Nevada, is distinct from X Corp, but plans to collaborate closely with Twitter, Tesla, and other companies, according to xAI’s website. xAI is actively recruiting experienced engineers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Critics argue that xAI’s focus on mitigating potential future AI threats distracts from the present harms that some algorithms inflict on marginalized communities. Musk initially reported his plans for xAI in April, around the same time he secured thousands of Nvidia’s GPU processors for a large language model. More details about the company and its mission are set to be shared in an upcoming Twitter Spaces event.
