Elon Musk’s AI company xAI aiming to ‘understand the true nature of the universe’

By Imane El Atillah  •  Updated: 13/07/2023 - 15:37

Elon Musk announces the launch of a new AI company, xAI, which aims to “understand the true nature of the universe”.

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) company, called xAI.

The company is led by the billionaire and also includes several top AI researchers and engineers who have been involved with multiple major companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.

In April this year, Musk announced his plans to launch his own AI company during an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

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He claimed his new AI startup will be an alternative to popular AI companies that he says are biassed, and that it will serve as a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe”.

Since the emergence of OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT, Musk has been critical of the development of AI and publicly called out regulations by AI model providers.

Although Musk was one of the early funders of OpenAI before he stepped down from its board in 2018, he grew critical of the company’s regulations and publicly called it out multiple times. 

"It does seem weird that something can be a nonprofit, open-source and somehow transform itself into a for-profit, closed-source," Musk said in a CNBC interview.

He also said in a tweet in December: “The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly.”

• 'Profound risk to humanity': Tech leaders call for 'pause' on advanced AI development

xAI’s website says the company aims to “understand the true nature of the universe", reflecting Musk’s concerns about the dangers AI will cause in the future.

During a Twitter Spaces event Wednesday evening, Musk explained that xAI is going to create a "maximally curious" AI instead of programming morality into it. 

"If it tried to understand the true nature of the universe, that's actually the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint," Musk said, as reported by Reuters.

"I think it is going to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than not-humanity."

The announcement of the new AI company comes only a few months after Musk signed an open letter calling for a pause on AI development over its potential risks.

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