Elon Musk plans to save humanity from AI with his TruthGPT

In an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the SpaceX and Tesla founder, said his TruthGPT will challenge the offering from Microsoft and Google.

“I’m going to start something which I call TruthGPT, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in the interview.

“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, who is part of a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives who called for a six-month pause on developing any AI system more powerful that OpenAI’s GPT-4, said AI had the potential of destroying civilisation.

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production. It has the potential of civilisational destruction,” said Musk.

Musk has called for regulating AI, and tweeted that he used his only meeting with then-President Barrack Obama to warn of its dangers.

In a reply to a tweet over the weekend, he said: “I saw it happening from well before GPT-1, which is why I tried to warn the public for years. The only one on one meeting I ever had with Obama as President I used not to promote Tesla or SpaceX, but to encourage AI regulation.”

Musk is one of the original co-founders of OpenAI in 2015. He stepped down from the board in 2018, but has used the technology significantly in developing Tesla.

Musk said TruthGPT “might be the best path to safety that would be unlikely to annihilate humans” and added: “It’s simply starting late. But I will try to create a third option (to Microsoft and Google).”

He criticised OpenAI, now backed by Microsoft, accusing the company of “training the AI to lie” and said it has now become a “closed source and for-profit” organisation.

“The intention with OpenAI was, obviously, to do good, but it’s not clear whether it’s actually doing good. I can’t tell at this point, except that I’m worried about the fact that it’s being trained to be politically correct, which is simply another way of being on Twitter and saying untruthful things. Yes. So that’s a bad sign,” he added.

In February, Musk tweeted that OpenAI was created as an open-source nonprofit “to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed-source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.”

Musk last month registered a firm named X.AI Corp. The firm, incorporated in Nevada, listed Musk as the sole director.