Elon Musk Is Worried About AI Posing A Threat To Humanity, But Prepares To Launch OpenAI Rival

Tesla Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk has been fairly vocal about sharing his concerns about rapid artificial intelligence developments. However, that didn’t stop him from planning to launch his own OpenAI rival. 

What Happened: In an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the billionaire tech tycoon said he will launch a “maximum truth-seeking AI” platform called “TruthGPT.” 

“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 during the interview, which aired on Monday.

See Also: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Responds To Letter From Elon Musk And Others Calling For Pause On AI Research: Not ‘The Optimal Way To Address It’

Explaining his reasoning behind the decision, Musk criticized Microsoft Corp-backed MSFT OpenAI — the parent company of chatGPT, which he co-founded in 2015 — for “training the AI to lie” and transforming into a “closed source” for-profit organization. 

Musk stated that TruthGPT could be “the best path to safety” that is “unlikely to annihilate humans”.

This isn’t the first time Musk mentioned the “need” for TruthGPT. Earlier this year, in February, Musk took to Twitter and said, “What we need is TruthGPT.” Even at that point, he didn’t provide further details, but the tech billionaire has previously criticized chatGPT over political bias. 

Musk also said regulations might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but “we should have regulatory agencies.” He previously also said that during his only one-on-one meeting with former U.S. President Barack Obama, he didn’t speak about Tesla or SpaceX but AI regulation. 

He accused Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL co-founder Larry Page of not taking AI safety seriously in anticipation of building a “Digital God.”

Why It’s Important: It was reported that the Tesla CEO had assembled a team of AI researchers and engineers and secured thousands of high-powered GPU processors from Nvidia Corp. NVDA. 

Musk reportedly wanted to run OpenAI by himself, but fellow co-founder Sam Altman and others turned down his proposal.

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