What is Elon Musk’s relationship with ChatGPT, the famous AI chatbot?
Elon Musk has called ChatGPT “scary good”. The billionaire has a long history with OpenAI, the creator of the viral artificial intelligence chatbot.
If it has to do with new technology, electric cars and reuseable rockets, or improving old technology, boring tunnels in the ground, Elon Musk would seem to have a hand in it somehow. So is the case with ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot the latest version of which has gone viral.
OpenAI, the creator of the AI chatbot, released a new test version of ChatGPT at the end of November but so many people signed up to use it that the tech company had to temporarily shut down the link. The AI chatbot can create eerily human-like essays, poems and stories as well as provide conversation to text prompts which the owner of Twitter called “scary good.”
So what exactly is Elon Musk’s link to ChatGPT?
Elon Musk’s relationship with ChatGPT
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including the Tesla CEO and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. They pledged $1 billion to create the then nonprofit to develop AI “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.”
However, Musk didn’t stay directly connected with the company for long. In 2018 he left the board of directors, conflicts of interests were cited, but he said that he would continue to donate to its mission. The billionaire’s departure came as Tesla was working on developing autonomous vehicle technology and was competing for many of the same employees.
Musk has been vocal about the potential dangers of AI which was one of his reasons for participating in the creation of the OpenAI. But since leaving the new owner of Twitter has expressed concerns over the safety of the technology the company is developing. He said of the most recent version of the AI chatbot in a tweet “We are not far from dangerously strong AI.”
After taking over Twitter he paused OpenAI’s access to the social media platform’s database which it was using for training purposes. He cited the fact that the company is no longer open-source nor a nonprofit. The company became a “capped profit” corporation in 2019 and received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft.
The latest release of its technology is the GPT3.5 of its AI chatbot. A newer version, GPT4, is expected next year. The company also created an AI system that can produce realistic images and artwork based on text descriptions put into its DALL-E program.