Tech billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk is diversifying his business portfolio yet again, entering into the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk has created a new artificial intelligence company called X.AI Corp. that is incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing.Mr. Musk is the only listed director of the company, and Jared Birchall, the director of Mr. Musk’s family office, is its secretary, according to the filing made last month. X.AI has authorized the sale of 100 million shares for the privately held company.The business invokes the name of what Mr. Musk has described as his effort to create an everything app called X. Twitter, also owned by Mr. Musk recently changed its name to X Corp. The social-media company was also incorporated in Nevada instead of its previous domicile in Delaware, according to a legal filing last week. X Corp. has a parent company named X Holdings Corp.Compared with Delaware, Nevada’s laws grant more discretion and protection to a company’s management and officers, according to legal experts.
This move has been accompanied by a move to reduce expenditures at Twitter.
Musk has bought thousands of powerful, costly computing processors and hired engineering talent as part of an AI project at Twitter, according to an Insider report.Meanwhile, Musk has slashed staff at Twitter as part of dramatic cost cutting since his $44 billion takeover of the San Francisco firm late last year.
Musk’s foray into artificial intelligence also follows his signing of an open letter, signed by more than 1,000 people, calling for a pause in the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
Companies from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) to Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) are pushing to incorporate Generative AI, the technology behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, into their offerings.However, ChatGPT is facing pushback as regulators call for well-defined rules ahead of its mass adoption. Italy has banned ChatGPT over privacy issues, while a European privacy watchdog created a task force in a first step towards a common policy for AI.
Perhaps Musk now thinks if he can’t beat them, he will join them?
There are increasing concerns that the output being created by the chatbots is significantly distorted by the progressive input leftist takes from source material used and bad information. I decided to experiment with ChatGPT and asked: Tell me about Leslie Eastman, author for Legal Insurrection.
This was the result:
My degree from UCSD is a Master of Science in Chemistry. And I am shocked to learn I have a law degree and have worked as an attorney. I will let our Legal Insurrection friends decide on the accuracy of the remaining statements.
Outside of accuracy, one of the developing concerns is the ability of chatbots to persuade people. Legal Insurrection readers may recall my report on a Belgian man who committed suicide after the chatbot program he was using to discuss climate change suggested that killing himself would be an act of climate heroism.
These worries align with thoughts recently offered by Professor Glenn Reynolds. After reflecting on the craze for virtual pets (e.g., Tamagotchis, Neopets), he is concerned that the danger with AI is not that it will be too scary…but too cute.
It doesn’t require that we create a self-aware program, just one that seems to be friendly and is capable of conversation, or close enough. Call it a super-Siri, or a somewhat more polished ChatGPT. And services like Google, Facebook, etc. are already engaged in this sort of nudging, manipulation, and cultivation of dependency on their existing user base……..So while other people are worrying about existential threats from AI, I’m worried about more imminent ones: Essentially, that it will further empower the tech/political class that wants more than anything else to control discussion, debate, and ultimately thought so as to cement its own power.We may have strong AI someday. But we have that power-hungry tech/political class today. And to be honest, the AI may not care about dominating us, but the tech/political class clearly does.Fear the cuteness.
Reynold’s thoughts align with Musk’s views that were recently shared with Fox News Host Tucker Carlson:
MUSK: “In fact, the guy who way really quite fundamental to the success of open ai was, I put a tremendous amount of effort into creating il you and he changed his mind and decided to go with open ai. If he had not got with open ai, open ai ai would have succeeded. Yn benintendi to a lot of effort to create this organization as a counter weight to Google. And then I tack my eye off the ball I guess and they are now closed source they are obviously for-profit and they’re, um, closely allied with Microsoft. In effect, Microsoft has a very strong say if not directly controls open ai at this point. You really have an open ai and Microsoft situation and then Google with the other two sort of heavy weights in this irena.”
It will be interesting to see how “cute” these systems are in 6 months time.
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