Elon Musk announced he has started an artificial intelligence platform called xAI, which says its mission is to “understand the true nature of the universe.”
Musk, the owner of several companies including
Tesla
(ticker: TSLA), SpaceX, and Twitter, made the announcement in a tweet, which immediately garnered 40,000 “likes” and 4,447 retweets. By 6 p.m. Wednesday, it had 112,000 likes and 12,500 retweets.
Musk also changed his Twitter bio to the single word: @xAI
Musk has discussed plans to build an AI operation to rival that of
Microsoft
and
Alphabet
-owned Google. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that developed the ChatGPT chatbot. Musk left that venture in 2018 and Microsoft currently backs it. Musk also recently signed onto an open letter with other technology industry executives calling for a pause in training more powerful AI models.
“I’m going to start something which I call ‘Truth GPT’ or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in April during an interview on Fox News.
Musk announced xAI a week after
Facebook
-parent Meta Platforms (META) launched its microblogging app Threads in more than 100 countries, a rival to Musk’s Twitter. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 100 million users had signed up in the first five days.
The @xAI profile, opened in May, already has 97,700 followers, despite not having sent a single tweet–until Wednesday. The account is following 12 people, including Musk and two others–Greg Yang and Toby Pohlen–who identify themselves as cofounders of @xAI
@xAI’s first tweet, asking “What are the most fundamental unanswered questions?” garnered 9,000 “likes” and 1,600 retweets within the first 30 minutes. By 6 p.m. Wednesday, the account had more than 240,000 followers.
xAI’s website, https://x.ai/ , says that people can meet the team and ask questions during a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, July 14.
xAI’s team has previously worked at AI companies including OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Google DeepMind. The group is advised by Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, a research nonprofit that aims to reduce “societal-scale risks” from the emerging technology.
The website says xAI is a separate company from Musk’s X Corp, “but will work closely with X (twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.” The company is also recruiting experienced engineers and researchers for its technical staff in the Bay Area.
Write to Janet H. Cho at [email protected]
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