Elon Musk's AI Startup to Launch First Product

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Facts

  • Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) company, known as xAI, will release its first AI model to a 'select group' of people on Saturday, according to a post by the billionaire on X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk argued that in 'some important respects,' xAI's model is 'the best that currently exists.'1
  • This comes as Musk, who recently participated in an AI-related discussion with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, said xAI is a 'separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.'2
  • Musk's AI company, whose website says its goal is to 'understand the true nature of the universe,' reportedly includes team members who formerly worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Twitter, and Tesla, who have worked on projects including DeepMind’s AlphaCode and OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 chatbots.3
  • The founder of Oracle and self-proclaimed friend of Musk, Larry Ellison, said in September that xAI had inked an agreement to train its AI model on Oracle's cloud.4
  • During the UK AI summit, Musk said AI will be the 'most disruptive force in history,' though added that it will ultimately become a 'force for good.' He claimed it would take away the need for people to work but warned that it should have an 'off switch' just in case things go bad.1

Sources: 1Forbes, 2Mashable, 3CNBC and 4Reuters.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by TechXplore. While Musk touts his AI endeavors as a pursuit of good, the reality is that creating a universal app for everything will inevitably bring about security and privacy concerns. Just ask the people in China, whose most important daily functions, from social media and phone calls to mobile payments and investing, are under the watchful eye of the government. Musk is likely going to struggle in his attempt to garner a user base willing to put their entire lives in his hands and AI-powered applications.
  • Narrative B, as provided by The Telegraph. Elon Musk speaks about AI in both a thoughtful and benevolent manner. Through his immense understanding of technology, he wants 'robots' to help give humanity a 'universal high income' rather than everyone living together at the bottom. Furthermore, he has and continues to openly call for strict safety measures to ensure AI can be turned off if it goes awry. If the AI-powered 'everything app' is going to be invented, Musk will undoubtedly lead the way.

Predictions