In April of this year, Elon Musk, the current CEO of Tesla and executive chair and CTO of Twitter, shared his plans for a brand-new AI model. He said that he has a vision of building a “maximum truth-seeking AI.” After this announcement, there were speculations that it would be named “TruthGPT.” But in reality, Elon has named it “xAI,” and he has formally launched it.
With the formal launch of xAI, Elon Musk is now one step closer to his vision of offering a maximum truth-seeking Artificial Intelligence model. And it goes without saying that Elon is now prepared to take on ChatGPT, which is the generative AI that pretty much all the big tech companies are after.
How xAI Came into Existence
In April, Elon Musk merged his shell company, X Corp, with Twitter, which he has recently acquired. Elon confirmed that the merging was intended to bring xAI to life and overcome challenges that must be surpassed to be on top of ChatGPT. (source)
It is important to note one thing: Elon Musk has been utilizing X brand for his vision of an “everything app” on the pattern of WeChat by Tencent. Nonetheless, in April, Musk explained most of his AI-related vision.
During an exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk revealed his ongoing development of a next-generation generative Artificial Intelligence. xAI would try to understand the nature of the universe. By making the model do so, Elon assured that it would unlikely “annihilate humans.” (source)
Now, why would Elon Musk make such a statement? When ChatGPT launched, many believed it would soon replace humans. And judging by how good AI has gotten over time, it has indeed taken over some jobs of humans. This raised concerns about the next gen xAI.
Therefore, with that particular statement, Elon Musk has basically answered the concerns of the people. That is, xAI is not here to take over humans. Instead, it will understand the nature of the universe and be a helping hand to humans.
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xAI’s Developmental Progress
Upon closer examination, you will notice that xAI has quite an eclectic team behind it. There are employees from OpenAI, DeepMind, Google Research, Tesla, Microsoft Research, and the University of Toronto. (Source) This diverse portfolio of the team makes the new AI capable of reaching the stars.
Furthermore, Elon has acquired approximately 10,000 GPUs from Nvidia in order to train the Large Language Model (LLM). This model will be trained on the same pattern as ChatGPT (Source). That said, there’s no official word on the current advancement of the AI model. But we will get you updated as soon as concrete information lands.
Current Conflicts Can Slow Down the Progress
Even if Elon Musk takes the initiative of taking over ChatGPT with xAI, you need to consider that he is currently trying to undermine Meta’s recent launch, Threads.
As some may already be aware, Threads is a Twitter-like platform that has been gaining a lot of popularity. Twitter’s lawyer has even sent threats of a lawsuit to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook and Meta. Musk believes that Meta has utilized the former employees of Twitter to create Threads, which made Meta violate terms and conditions.
So, despite the formal launch of xAI, we will not see many advancements any time soon. Yes, Musk has not formally disclosed whether he will take the matter of Threads to court. But before Musk can take this contention in court, Musk’s legal team needs two things.
First, the team needs valid proof that Meta has explicitly informed the former Twitter employees that they were hired to create a Twitter clone. Secondly, the team needs proof that Meta has deliberately taken possession of the trade secrets of Twitter to form Threads. All of these will take time and can halt the progress of xAI. So, it’s not yet clear whether the new AI can take over ChatGPT.
