Elon Musk hires a team to build a chatbot rivalling ChatGPT

Elon Musk says that ChatGPT and similar technologies are “scary good” and may pose a threat to humanity. Therefore, he’s building his own.

Elon Musk is reportedly seeking a team of experts to build a rival to ChatGPT after accusing the AI of being “woke,” despite co-founding the company that created it, OpenAI, in 2015. The Tesla boss is trying to recruit talented individuals for the new venture, including Igor Babushkin, a machine-learning specialist from Google with experience in chatbot design.

Musk originally set up OpenAI to regulate artificial intelligence but left in 2018 over disagreements about the company’s direction and mission. The goal of the organisation was to explore the ramifications of artificial general intelligence, not, in his words, create a “maximum-profit enterprise effectively controlled by Microsoft.”

Since then, OpenAI has continued to go down in Musk’s estimation, thanks to its political biases. “The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly,” he said, criticising the enterprise lacking proper safeguards.

Piling on more fear, the results of OpenAI’s efforts are impressive. Following ChatGPT 3.5’s release in November 2022, Musk called the technology “scary good” and told followers on Twitter: “we are not far from dangerously strong AI.” Later when Microsoft launched the beta of its new AI-powered search engine, the SpaceX CEO said it sounded “eerily like the AI in System Shock that goes haywire & kills everyone,” referring to a murderous artificial intelligence from a 1994 video game.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and creator of ChatGPT, agrees with the billionaire mogul. He concedes that AI is now strong enough to pose a cybersecurity risk and that “we could get to real [artificial general intelligence] in the next decade.”

Now it appears Musk wants to develop similar technology himself. A new venture will help him counter the threat he sees in recent developments and get one step ahead of rival technology.

Even so, the project remains in its earliest stages. Mr Babuschkin, the Independent notes, isn’t formally employed by Musk yet. Furthermore, the duo hasn’t released any additional information about who will join them or provided product timelines. Reports indicate that research is still in the earliest stages.

With that said, Musk has a habit of building exceptionally profitable businesses over relatively short time spans. This new AI venture could yield results faster than many imagine if it leverages existing technology.

Of course, OpenAI and Musk’s new venture are not the only artificial intelligence game in town. There are many others in development, some built on different models.

Most notably, Google will soon release Bard, an AI designed to help users with searches. The bot will transform the service from a search engine to an “answer engine,” negating the need to click on website links to find answers.

Like ChatGPT, Bard’s abilities come from its in-built large language model (LLM) called LaMDA. It generates answers to questions with a high skill level, similar to OpenAI’s offering. However, it may be significantly more advanced, to the point where Google engineer Blake Lemoine, who worked on the project, warned that it might be conscious.

“During my conversations with the chatbot, …, I came to the conclusion that the AI could be sentient due to the emotions that it expressed reliably and in the right context. It wasn’t just spouting words.”

When the machine said it felt anxious, Blake could see his role in triggering those emotions. “The code didn’t say, ‘feel anxious when this happens’. However, whenever [certain] conversation topics would come up, the AI said it felt anxious.”

Snapchat will also soon launch its My AI bot based on ChatGPT chatbot software. The artificial intelligence will act similarly to OpenAI’s tool, answering users’ questions. However, Snap is training it to adhere to the company’s trust and safety guidelines, steering the AI clear of sexually explicit content, violence, swearing, and politics.

Other chatbots in the works include Jasper Chat, Bing AI (which leverages OpenAI’s technology), Chinchilla, YouChat, Caktus AI, and Chai App. While ChatGPT is the undisputed king, these are good alternatives when servers are busy.

Click4Assistance is excited about the development of chatbots generally, and the prospect of Elon Musk putting his financial weight and expertise behind a rival service. We’ve been including AI technology in our chatbots for years. With us, you can build a chatbot customised to your industry or vertical that can understand user queries posed in natural language.