Elon Musk's AI Warnings Could Be His Catch-Up Plan, A Venture Capitalist Claims

(Image credit- Mashable) Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur, hypothesized that Elon Musk's cautions about the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) could be a plan to overtake competitors in the race for AI. Khosla expressed his opinions to Bloomberg, saying that Musk's calls to halt the advancement of AI might be a ruse to give him a competitive advantage. Musk signed an open letter warning about the unmanageable rivalry between AI companies in March of this year, calling for a six-month pause on further breakthroughs. Musk was one of over 1,000 people who signed the letter. Musk recently supported Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "Godfather of AI," when he expressed regret over the development of AI that would put humans in peril. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image credit- Mint[/caption] Khosla, though, thinks Musk's cautions about AI could be a calculated strategy to compete with other AI companies. "Elon is falling behind," he said. "I 80% believe that his call to halt AI advancement was made in order for him to catch up." It should be noted that Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside a group of financiers and scientists that included Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The group's goals were to create safe AI and make sure that everyone could profit from it. Musk, however, left the OpenAI board in 2018 due to disagreements with the group. He raised worries that Google and other large corporations would monopolize the company's research and that it might hasten the emergence of harmful AI. Since that time, Musk has concentrated on advancing AI at his other businesses, such as Tesla and Neuralink. According to rumors, Musk was worried that OpenAI was trailing Google in the development of new AI technologies. He thought that working for Tesla would increase his chances of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Image credit- Financial Times[/caption] However, Musk is currently concentrating on expanding his AI businesses and creating a ChatGPT substitute. He would call his potential rival ChatGPT "TruthGPT." Musk asserted that ChatGPT demonstrates a liberal bias in an interview with Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and that his preferred replacement would be a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe." Musk recently announced X.AI Corp, a new business endeavor, listing himself as its director and Jared Birchall, a longstanding advisor, as the secretary. When worries regarding the development of AI technologies were first emerging, TruthGPT was revealed. TruthGPT tries to allay worries about purported leftist bias in AI technologies, and Musk was one among the tech titans who backed an open letter encouraging AI companies to suspend development. Also read: Elon Musk’s TruthGPT: A “Maximum Truth-Seeking” AI Musk has voiced alarm over the possible risks posed by AI to humanity, even claiming that it might be even riskier than cars or rockets. Khosla, though, thinks that Musk is only using these cautions as a tactic to stay ahead of the ongoing AI competition.