Elon Musk‘s grand plans of ensuring AI doesn’t go all rogue and annihilate the human race involves creating another AI that apparently cares enough about the understanding of the universe (and humanity) so as not to destroy it. Smart right? During a recent interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, our favorite tech overlord revealed that he’s working on his own chatbot dubbed TruthGPT, which acts as a “maximum truth-seeking AI.” While we aren’t quite sure what “maximum truth-seeking” means, Musk did explain that he wants to create another alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard whose sole purpose is to “create more good than harm.”
“I’m going to start something which you call TruthGPT or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe. And I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe,” Musk expressed during the Fox & Friends show.
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Shedding more light on his project, Musk gave a somewhat weird analogy and went on to compare his AI’s supposed lack of desire to destroy all of humanity to the way humans seek to protect chimpanzees. “We recognize humanity could decide to hunt down all the chimpanzees and kill them,” Musk said. “We’re actually glad that they exist, and we aspire to protect their habitats.” Musk billed TruthGPT as a course correction to OpenAI, the AI nonprofit company he helped create, which has since begun operating as a for-profit subsidiary.
Musk even hinted that OpenAI’s profit incentives could potentially mess with the ethics of the AI models that it creates and positioned TruthGPT as a more transparent alternative. He remained fairly cautious, mentioning that he thinks AI can be dangerous if mismanaged, with the “potential for civilizational destruction,” and demanded some sort of government oversight over AI projects. “It wouldn’t quite happen like Terminator,” he remarked.
While nothing much was revealed about the project, it seems like Tesla’s chief is really serious and invested in doing his own thing with AI. To help carry out his schemes, he even founded a new AI company and recruited Igor Babuschkin, a scientist at the artificial intelligence lab DeepMind to guide the whole initiative. That said, given Musk’s jam-packed schedule and sheer the number of things he juggles, we aren’t quite sure how he’ll find the time for yet another project.
Image: AFP-JIJI
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