Elon Musk Sparks Culture Wars in AI: Will His New AI Company Rival OpenAI?

The culture wars have finally found their way into the field of AI, with Elon Musk leading the charge. Musk has been criticizing what he calls “Woke AI” on Twitter since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. He specifically targeted OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, for its features that prevent the chatbot from repeating racist and sexist language. Musk is now reportedly courting AI researchers with plans to start a new AI company to compete with OpenAI.

Musk tweeted in December, “The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly.” It is true that large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT struggle to tell the truth and often confidently assert false information. However, Musk seems to be conflating AI’s truthfulness problem with efforts to reduce racism and sexism within AI companies.

The racism and sexism in unfiltered LLMs are a result of the large amounts of internet data on which they were trained. However, Musk and right-wing internet influencers are suggesting that these biases are desirable features in AI. They claim that efforts to eliminate these biases are another form of censorship by liberal forces. Some AI researchers have expressed concern that Musk’s rhetoric will harm cooperation in the field of AI.

Musk was a member of the founding team of OpenAI, a non-profit organization established in 2015 to counter the concentration of AI expertise in the hands of for-profit tech companies. Musk left the organization in 2018 due to disagreements over its approach. OpenAI has since become a for-profit company and transitioned from making its research public to selling its services.

Despite his concerns about the dangers of AI, Musk appears to believe that starting another AI company would not contribute to the development of dangerous technology. Musk tweeted a meme suggesting that his new venture, rumored to be called “BasedAI,” would supplant both “Woke AI” and “Closed AI.” However, some AI researchers are worried that Musk’s rhetoric will undermine efforts to make AI more useful and beneficial for society.

Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who Musk reportedly approached about his plans to start a new AI company, claims that Musk’s objective is to improve the reasoning abilities and factualness of language models. Regardless of his intentions, Musk’s comments and actions have sparked a culture war in AI that threatens to damage cooperation and progress in the field.

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