Musk unveils new AI start-up in bid to rival ChatGPT

Investing.com -- Elon Musk has announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, as the billionaire aims to create a challenger to Microsoft-backed (NASDAQ:MSFT) OpenAI's ChatGPT that features a "safer" version of AI.

The company, xAI, will be led by Musk and include a team of engineers who previously worked at many of the major tech giants vying to develop rivals to ChatGPT. One of the firm's advisors will be Dan Hendrycks, the executive director of the Center for AI Safety, a non-profit that published an open letter earlier this year saying that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI "should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." The letter received pushback from some academics and ethicists.

Musk -- also the chief executive of electric car manufacturer Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and rocket maker SpaceX as well as the owner of social media platform Twitter -- has long voiced concerns over the impact of AI, saying that it could one day bring about "civilizational destruction."

In a Twitter Spaces event on Wednesday, Musk said he wants xAI to seek to build a "maximally curious" AI, instead of explicitly aiming to program morality into the system.

"If it tried to understand the true nature of the universe, that's actually the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint," Musk said.

According to media reports and state filings, Musk previously incorporated a firm named xAI Corp in Nevada in March. In April, Musk also outlined plans for "TruthGPT," arguing in a taped interview with Fox News that he fears that many current AI businesses are training their models to be "politically correct."