Elon Musk says he is working on rival to ChatGPT

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Tech billionaire Elon Musk said he is working on creating an artificial intelligence to rival Microsoft-supported ChatGPT, promising a safer alternative in the global AI race.

"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, and I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans, because we are an interesting part of the universe hopefully," he said Monday during a Fox News interview.

"AI is perhaps more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design, or production maintenance or bad car production," he said. "It has the potential of civilizational destruction."

OpenAI's ChatGPT is the current leader in the race to build artificial intelligence. Musk was one of the group's initial founders and funders in 2015. He served on the firm's board until he departed in 2018.

Musk lamented OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft, saying it is "not clear" if ChatGPT is "actually doing good," and further claimed it is being "trained to be politically correct, which is simply another way of saying untruthful things."

"I really put a lot a lot of effort into creating this organization to serve as a counterweight to Google," he said. "And then I kind of took my eye off the ball, I guess, and they are now closed source. And they are obviously for profit, and they’re closely aligned with Microsoft, and in effect, Microsoft has a very strong say if not directly controls at this point.”