Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he would launch an artificial intelligence platform called TruthGPT to challenge Microsoft and Google products in the field, Reuters reports.
Musk criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI — the developer of the chatGPT chat software — for "training AI to lie," and said OpenAI is now a "closed source of AI" and a "for-profit organization closely allied with Microsoft."
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, was also accused of not taking the safety of artificial intelligence seriously.
Musk said in an interview with Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson that aired Monday: "I'm going to start something I call Truth GPT, or Maximum Truth-Seeking Artificial Intelligence, which is trying to understand the nature of the universe."
Truth GPT may be the safest route for this technology, he said, adding that he started late but would try to create a third option.
Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft and Big did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Musk's story brings to mind US President Donald Trump's case with social media platforms that banned him, prompting him to build a new platform called Truth Social.
Reuters quoted what it called people familiar with the matter as saying Musk was hunting AI employees from Alphabet, Google's parent company, to launch a startup to rival OpenAI.
Musk last month registered a company called X.AI Corp. founded in Nevada, according to a government filing. The company listed Musk as sole director and Jared Birshall, managing director of Musk's family office, as secretary.
Civilizational destruction
The move came even after Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives called for a 4-month halt to the development of more powerful systems than OpenAI's newly launched GPT-4, warning of the new technology's risks to society.
Musk also reiterated his warnings about AI during the interview with Carlson, saying that "AI is more dangerous than mismanaging aircraft design, production maintenance or bad car production, it has the potential for civilizational destruction."
Musk tweeted over the weekend that he met former U.S. President Barack Obama when he was president and told him Washington needed to "encourage AI regulation."
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but resigned from the company's board in 2018, and in 2019 tweeted that he left because he had to focus on Tesla and SpaceX.
I had to focus on solving a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems at Tesla (especially) & SpaceX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2019
Musk became CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and CEO of Twitter, the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.
In January, Microsoft announced a billions of dollars in an additional investment in OpenAI, intensifying competition with rival Google and fueling the race to attract funding for artificial intelligence projects in Silicon Valley.