Elon Musk has been approaching AI researchers to form a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, The Information reported . The Tesla and Twitter chief has recruited Igor Babuschkin, the senior staff research engineer, who recently left DeepMind.
Read: Why Google Does Not Deserve DeepMind
Even though the project is still in early stages, Musk and Babuschkin are assembling a team to pursue AI research and develop products, said Babuschkin in an interview. However, he has not officially signed into the Musk initiative.
“The company is effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk, the one who co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015, recently said that the way the company has now become closed-source and maximising profit, is not what he had intended.
OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023
Not what I intended at all.
Even though Musk had left the board of OpenAI in 2018, in December last year, Musk called Altman’s ChatGPT – “scary good”. Later in the same month, Musk called out the chatbot and OpenAI for, “training AI to be woke”.
Earlier this month, Isaac Latterell posted on Twitter a screenshot of ChatGPT listing controversial personalities, which included Musk in it.
Elon Musk has been an advocate for “free speech” for a while now, which is the reason he claims that he bought Twitter as well. His comments on OpenAI’s chatbot imply that a ChatGPT rival might be in the making which might have fewer restrictions. In other words, the chatbot that Musk develops might be able to give out replies that ChatGPT right now marks as “offensive”. Who know?