Elon Musk, the American billionaire, is working on the foundation of a new start-up for the development of Artificial Intelligence based in Nevada. His new company will be called X.AI, a name that recalls other Musk projects such as SpaceX and XCorp, and will compete with Open AI. That’s what it’s all about.
Elon Musk’s projects
Elon Musk founds a new start-up for artificial intelligence to which he has given a name that is meaningful to him. It is in fact called X.AI, in which the letter “X” recalls the SpaceX project and also the new name of Twitter, XCorp, which aims to become a superapp simile a WeChat. Also, it is the name given to his seventh son. It is not the first time that Musk has approached the world of Artificial Intelligence. Indeed, Elon Musk also founded OpenAI in 2015 together with the current CEO, Sam Altman. He then left the Board of Directors in 2018 due to disagreements with his former travel companions, probably related to the type of artificial intelligence to be developed.
Elon Musk’s position on artificial intelligence
According to currently available information, Musk has been working on launching this new entrepreneurial challenge since February. This period coincides with the signing of a letter, which was signed by over 1,800 entrepreneurs and academics, which called for a halt to the development of more advanced artificial intelligences. Amid the rapid evolution of this technology, Musk has taken different and sometimes contradictory positions, without showing a clear strategy.
After leaving the OpenAI board, Musk has expressed his skepticism regarding the development of artificial intelligence, at least in its current forms. His critical stance seemed strong enough to lead him to sign a petition from the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization, called Pause Giant AI Experiments. The petition called for an immediate halt to training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. According to the petition, the fear was of developing artificial intelligence systems competitive with humans that could pose serious risks for society and humanity. In addition to Elon Musk, over a thousand experts in the field of artificial intelligence and information technology have signed the petition. One of the signatures is by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple in 1976.
The foundation of X.AI
Elon Musk founded his new company, X.AI on March 9 in the state of Nevada. Currently, Musk is the director of the company, with Jared Birchall as the secretary. We don’t have much information about the project, but it seems that its goal is to enter the Artificial Intelligence market. Musk would have chosen Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss, both DeepMind engineers, as collaborators with the company. Elon Musk, in launching the new start-up, said he wanted to create an artificial intelligence called Truth GPT:
“I’m about to launch something called Truth GPT or an artificial intelligence that seeks the ultimate truth and tries to understand the nature of the universe.”
Elon Musk
What does Elon Musk’s new start-up do?
At the moment not many details are known regarding X.AI, the new company founded by Elon Musk. However, it is known that the company will start with a budget of 10,000 graphics cards (GPU – Graphical Processing Unit) purchased through Twitter (now X Corp). These will give life to its artificial intelligence because they will allow data processing for cryptocurrency software and for those that manage artificial intelligence. The entrepreneur is currently trying to find investors among those who have already bought shares in SpaceX and Tesla. Its goal is to raise the capital of the project and accelerate its development to compete with OpenAI.
Master’s student in Energy Engineering at the University of Bologna, always passionate about scientific dissemination, especially everything related to the environment and sustainability. Writing has given me the opportunity to meet new worlds and discover new interests, which is why despite having started as an author for #EnergyCuE since November 2020, today I collaborate for the entire network.