Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is letting go of his spot on the board of ethics research group OpenAI to prevent a future conflict of interest.
In a blog post, OpenAI announced that the decision had been taken to preempt any conflict of interest as Tesla is becoming more focused on artificial intelligence. However, Musk will reportedly continue to donate money and offer advice the organisation.
The tech billionaire had previously spoken against artificial intelligence, claiming that it presented more risk than North Korea.
If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea. pic.twitter.com/2z0tiid0lc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that’s a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
In 2014, Musk also said that artificial intelligence his the biggest existential threat to humanity. “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful,” Musk had said. “I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish,” he had added.
Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman co-founded the $1 billion company in 2015 as a non-profit organisation with a aim to study ethics and safety of artificial intelligence.
The company also added that it was broadening its base of funder in order to ramp up investments in their people and the computer resources necessary to make consequential breakthrough in artificial intelligence.
In the coming months it would articulate the principles and layout policies needed to ensure that AI ‘benefits all of humanity’, OpenAI said in its blog post.
The company also announced new donors, including co-founder of Stellar Jed McCaleb, video game developer Gabe Newell and Skype founder Jaan Tallin, among others.
