Elon Musk has officially launched his long-awaited artificial intelligence startup called xAI. The company aims to challenge OpenAI, in the development of an alternative to ChatGPT. Musk, known for his roles as CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, has repeatedly expressed concerns about the potential dangers of AI and the need for regulation in the industry.
During a Twitter Spaces event, Musk outlined his plan for building a safer AI. Instead of directly programming morality into the AI, xAI will focus on creating a highly curious AI. Musk believes that encouraging the AI to understand the true nature of the universe would enhance its safety and make it inherently pro-humanity.
Musk also made a bold prediction, stating that superintelligence—AI that surpasses human intelligence—will be achieved within the next five to six years.
The xAI team consists of notable engineers from prominent tech companies. This includes Igor Babuschkin, a former engineer at Google’s DeepMind; Tony Wu, who previously worked at Google; Christian Szegedy, a former research scientist at Google; and Greg Yang, formerly at Microsoft. Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, will also serve as an advisor to the xAI team.
