Elon Musk Launches AI Firm To Take On OpenAI

Elon Musk, a billionaire and investor, made a significant announcement on Wednesday, revealing the establishment of a new artificial intelligence company called xAI. This move comes in the wake of his recent concerns about the potential dangers of AI technology to the public and the need for sector regulation.

xAI launched a website that outlines the company’s objective as “understanding the true nature of the universe.” The website features a team of professionals led by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. The team members have notable experience working with prominent entities such as DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto.

According to the website, the xAI team has made substantial contributions to widely-used methods in the field of AI and has played key roles in groundbreaking developments, including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. The team is advised by Dan Hendrycks who currently serves as the director of the Center for AI Safety.

xAI said it intends to collaborate closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to advance its mission. The company is actively seeking talented engineers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This launch is widely viewed as Musk’s attempt to compete with OpenAI, the organization behind the successful launch of ChatGPT, which he co-founded in 2015 but later departed in 2018 due to a conflict of interest related to his work on AI at Tesla.

Musk has openly criticized OpenAI for transitioning from a non-profit, open-source entity to a for-profit organization. In an interview with CNBC, he expressed his bewilderment at the transformation, comparing it to an organization created to save the Amazon rainforest instead turning into a lumber company that profits from its destruction.