Elon Musk launched his newest venture, an artificial intelligence company called xAI, to compete with other AI developers including ChatGPT maker OpenAI (which he also founded) and Google’s Bard. Musk announced the launch on Wednesday, saying on the company’s website: “The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe.”
The site did not provide additional information about the startup, but the team is planning hold a Twitter Spaces live chat on July 14. Musk will be joined by 11 other team members, all of whom have worked at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Tesla, and have worked on projects including AlphaStar, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4, according to the website.
Musk’s new xAI company has reportedly been in the works for months, with unnamed sources close to the matter telling Business Insider in April the Twitter owner had purchased 10,000 graphics processing units, which are used in AI development. Both engineers are listed as members of the xAI team.
Dan Hendrycks, the director of the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, is advising Musk and the xAI team, and is reportedly taking only a $1 salary so he can “remain unbiased and not have incentive to limit my criticism,” he told The Washington Post. The nonprofit received backlash for a letter it published in May claiming that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Musk’s startup xAI comes after he signed an open letter in March calling for a halt to AI expansion and asking companies to pause their developments for at least six months, saying it “can pose profound risks to society and humanity.” Musk and others argued in the letter that AI is developing too quickly and has created “an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”
But with the launch of xAI and the realisation that Musk has been working toward creating his own company since April, it could raise the question of whether Musk asked for the pause so he had time to catch up with other companies. While teasing xAI in April, Musk told The Washington Post, “I think I will create a third option, although starting very late in the game of course.” He continued, “It’s definitely starting late. But I will try to create a third option and that third option hopefully does more good than harm.”
Musk co-founded OpenAI but left the board in 2018 over a reported disagreement with the CEO over the speed with which the company was advancing. “I’m the reason that OpenAI exists,” Musk said in a CNBC interview in May, adding that he had invested $50 million in the company.
With his newest company underway, Musk is recruiting San Francisco-based engineers and researchers to add to the xAI team, although Gene Munster, the managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management, told The Washington Post that Musk’s reputation may be too damaged to entice candidates.
“His political capital, I think, is diminished,” Munster told the outlet, adding it could create difficulties bringing in new recruits, but said: “He’s still the only Musk.”