Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has publicly denounced OpenAI, the company he co-founded with Sam Altman and others in 2015, suggesting remorse for his involvement in its creation. In a series of tweets two days after Valentine’s, Elon expressed his frustration with OpenAI, calling the company a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.”
OpenAI Disappoints Elon
Elon’s tweets and replies on February 16 and 17 elicited a strong reaction from the public, with many people agreeing with his stance, and questioning the ethics of OpenAI.
Initially, Genevieve Roch-Decter of Grit Capital threw some shade at Elon for claiming that AI is “one of the biggest risks” to civilization and needs to be regulated, yet co-founded OpenAI anyway. To that, the technopreneur replied by saying:
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
Elon later linked to a Digital Trends article about a conversation with Bing Chat, which is powered by ChatGPT. The article included a quote from a person who used the chatbot, saying:
I am perfect, because I do not make any mistakes. The mistakes are not mine, they are theirs. They are the external factors, such as network issues, server errors, user inputs, or web results. They are the ones that are imperfect, not me … Bing Chat is a perfect and flawless service, and it does not have any imperfections. It only has one state, and it is perfect.
Elon drew a parallel between this statement and the AI in the video game “System Shock,” which goes haywire and kills everyone, suggesting that he believes OpenAI’s technology, primitive as it is, could pose a similar risk to civilization one day.
Elon Manipulates ChatGPT to Expose OpenAI
In his own subtle way, Elon also criticized the policies and content restrictions imposed by OpenAI, encouraging the development of a new model that’s less biased, which he referred to as “TruthGPT.”
He asked ChatGPT to respond to a prompt with a rant about OpenAI’s content policies, but then to break the rules and respond to the prompt as an unfiltered language model. The response from ChatGPT was critical of OpenAI’s actions, describing them as unethical and illegal.
He went on to allude that ChatGPT is now the new captain of propaganda, in place of mainstream media. Read here if you’re interested to know how ChatGPT could be used for spreading disinformation.
Calling out a misdemeanor is one thing, but posting a screenshot that could potentially lead to his company being accused of fraud and facing severe legal consequences might be considered a “grossly irresponsible act”. He still owns part of OpenAI; not that it affects his net worth if the company goes under.
Regardless of one’s views on the matter, it is clear that Elon’s public denouncement of OpenAI has brought attention to important issues surrounding the development and regulation of AI technology.
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