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Is Musk gnawing at OpenAI’s success?

Is Musk gnawing at OpenAI's success?

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI and then withdrew from the project, is suing the AI ​​company and its CEO Sam Altman, who are already involved in an investigation into whether the company misled investors. All the details

Elon Musk accusing Sam Altman and OpenAI of having compromised, also due to the partnership with Microsoft, the company's original mission of creating artificial intelligence (AI) systems for the benefit of humanity by prioritizing profits is curious to say the least.

In fact, although both declare themselves very anxious about the direction this technology may take, both have the power to contain it in their hands. Except that Altman has more and Musk, if he hadn't left OpenAI, would perhaps now be in the same position while, instead, his xAI is certainly not at the same level.

MUSK'S ACCUSATION TO ALTMAN, OPENAI AND PURE MICROSOFT

The owner of Tesla, , therefore, not aimed at generating profits.

Among the criticisms there is also OpenAI's decision not to make the most advanced version of ChatGpt, namely Gpt-4, open source and to have "been effectively transformed into a division of Microsoft" since the Mountain View giant l 'has financed with several billion dollars and obtained exclusive commercial licenses.

For Musk, this partnership represents an abandonment of the principle of developing AI carefully and making the technology widely available.

Furthermore, the billionaire believes that OpenAI is not focused enough on the existential risks that the technology poses to humanity.

THE TORMENTED HISTORY BETWEEN MUSK AND OPENAI

Musk, who participated with a generous donation in the birth of OpenAI in 2015, left the board of directors three years later due to circumstances that were not entirely clear . Since then, however, the company's successes have already become history and today it is the emblem of the revolution brought about by AI.

The histrionic entrepreneur, who has never hidden his desire to compete with OpenAI, however still seems far from those results and has made various attempts to slow down the global race of artificial intelligence. First with an anti-ChatGpt manifesto to ask for a pause of at least six months in all the activities of GPT-4's most powerful AI laboratories and then continuing to remind us of the threat that generative artificial intelligence poses to humanity. All while running his own AI company called xAI.

WHAT POINT IS MUSK'S XAI

But are all these gimmicks a way to catch up? We don't talk about xAI as much as OpenAI, however, last July Wired wrote that while on the one hand Musk's project might seem like a "risky bet" because "at this stage, it is likely that xAI does not have the necessary cloud computing power to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google" and "its team of researchers, relatively small, does not seem to be able to beat the global competition", on the other hand the entrepreneur has an ace up his sleeve: "he has significant resources to draw on" .

Additionally, Tesla designs its own chips for AI and is also building a humanoid robot, which could help and be helped by xAI in the future.

Same new mission that unites the OpenAI-Microsoft duo, who are investing, together with Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, in the startup Figure AI, whose humanoid robots are destined to replace humans in "unsafe and unwanted jobs". Just yesterday the startup raised $675 million in funding, obtaining a valuation of $2.6 billion.

OPENWORKERS EXAMINED BY THE SEC

Meanwhile, OpenAI also faces another issue. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in fact examining Altman's internal communications as part of an investigation aimed at establishing whether the company's investors were deceived.

The period on which the SEC is focusing is the one in which the CEO of OpenAI was suddenly fired by the Board of Directors and then reinstated after a few days. Among the possible explanations for this episode, one of the most widespread is the contrast between Altman, who in recent years has pushed for rapid commercialization of the technologies developed by OpenAI, and the Board of Directors, who instead would have favored a more cautious development and greater pay attention to possible risks.


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/musk-sta-rosicando-per-il-successo-di-openai/ on Fri, 01 Mar 2024 15:30:03 +0000.