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AI WARS: Elon Signals Intent To Destroy Padawan Learner
Musk looking to form ChatGPT competitor
Kyle Scott
February 28, 2023
Ohhhh yeah, baby!
Emergency send on a Tuesday on the report that Elon Musk may form a rival to take on Sam Altman and OpenAI, the company he co-founded.
SmokeBot is downright giddy - GIDDY - about the pending feud to end all feuds between Super Brains™ Elon Musk and Sam Altman. It’s like when [STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI SPOILER ALERT!] Luke Skywalker showed up on Crait to battle Kylo Ren, his old apprentice.
Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the high-profile chatbot made by the startup OpenAI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the effort and a third person briefed on the conversations.
In recent months Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for installing safeguards that prevent ChatGPT from producing text that might offend users. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but has since cut ties with the startup, suggested last year that OpenAI’s technology was an example of “training AI to be woke.” His comments imply that a rival chatbot would have fewer restrictions on divisive subjects compared to ChatGPT and a related chatbot Microsoft recently launched.
To spearhead the effort, Musk has been recruiting Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Alphabet’s DeepMind AI unit and specializes in the kind of machine-learning models that power chatbots like ChatGPT.
Musk has long sensed greed in Altman, even though Altman was incubated by the light (Y Combinator) and co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit alongside Musk, who has been warning about the Dark Side of AI.
I mean, just look at this Tweet:
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.
Not what I intended at all.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
9:36 AM • Feb 17, 2023
I saw darkness. I sensed it building in him. I'd seen it in moments during his training. But then I looked inside, and it was beyond what I ever imagined. [Capitalism] had already turned his heart. He would bring destruction and pain and death, and the end of everything I love because of what he will become, and for the briefest moment of pure instinct, I thought I could stop it. It passed like a fleeting shadow, and I was left with shame and with consequence. And the last thing I saw were the eyes of a frightened boy whose Master had failed him.
Musk is clearly very upset and concerned about what OpenAI has become. Perhaps for good reason. We’ve detailed in the last two sends [here and here] the potential “grievous” harms artificial general intelligence can bring upon the world.
i wish that all generations would treat previous generations with indulgence. humanity is deeply imperfect.
our grandparents did horrible things; our grandchildren will understand that we did horrible things we don’t yet understand.
— Sam Altman (@sama)
11:47 PM • Feb 18, 2023
the people who came before us are a complete package of good and bad, and collectively they pushed the world forward; it’s important to view the moral progress of society as an ongoing joint project we are all responsible for.
now it’s our turn.
— Sam Altman (@sama)
11:47 PM • Feb 18, 2023
Elon:
Altman, in what may be a necessary step to stave off draconian regulation or simply a response to Google’s publicly-stated caution, has explained the cautious approach his company will take.
In particular, we think it’s important that society agree on extremely wide bounds of how AI can be used, but that within those bounds, individual users have a lot of discretion. Our eventual hope is that the institutions of the world agree on what these wide bounds should be; in the shorter term we plan to run experiments for external input. The institutions of the world will need to be strengthened with additional capabilities and experience to be prepared for complex decisions about AGI.
Of course, as we’ve seen with Twitter, the “openness” Musk seeks has a very fluid definition, too. One man’s open is another man’s walled garden privately controlled by the richest man in the world.
In the Last Jedi, DJ explained to a crestfallen Finn that the rich guy who owned the ship they stole made all of his money by selling weapons to both the bad guys and the good guys. “It’s all a machine, partner.”
Musk can play both sides. He chooses the framework that suits him: subsidies with Tesla, governmental contracts with SpaceX, privatization with Twitter. Non-profit with AI?
The Information reports that this effort from Musk is still the early stages. Will this all come to fruition? Is Musk even here for the fight? Is he just baiting Altman into a battle to buy time for society to catch up?
Either way, this is probably not going to go the way we think.
SmokeBot out.