Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made a big announcement on his social platform X. Musk revealed that his new artificial intelligence venture, xAI, will be launching its first model on Saturday, November 4, 2023, exclusively for a select group of users.
Musk incorporated xAI in Nevada in March and formally announced its entry into the AI space in July. The goal of xAI is to “understand the true nature of the universe.” While specific details about the first product remain unknown, Musk claimed that it will be “the best that currently exists” in some important respects.
This announcement from Musk comes just days before OpenAI, a leading consumer-facing AI company, hosts its first DevDay on November 6. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has already hinted at exciting new product announcements at the event.
Interestingly, Musk and Altman were business partners but later became rivals. Musk reportedly wanted to lead OpenAI back in 2018, but the founders disagreed. Since then, OpenAI has transitioned to a profit-based organization, received significant investments from Microsoft, and launched its GPT and DALL-E line of AI models. Microsoft has also integrated OpenAI’s models into its own products.
Musk has criticized OpenAI for becoming a for-profit company controlled by Microsoft and for its shift from open to closed source. He even cut off OpenAI’s access to X’s data for training. Musk believes that he has a unique vision to bring safe and ethical AI to the world, which is why he started xAI to rival OpenAI.
In an interview with Fox News in April, Musk expressed his goal of creating “maximum truth-seeking AI” that understands the nature of the universe. This aligns with the mission of xAI, which has assembled a team of AI experts from various organizations, including DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto.
Musk hopes that by participating in the AI race, he can help humanity and deliver a competitive AI offering that surpasses the capabilities of Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft. It is reported that xAI’s model is being trained on data from X and the Oracle Cloud.
During a session in July, Musk also predicted that Artificial General Intelligence, which can learn and think like humans, could become a reality by around 2029.
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