Elon Musk Launches xAI

Elon Musk launched xAI, a new company to rival OpenAI and other big tech companies in the AI race. On its sparse website, the company states that “the goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe” without giving any details on its products or technologies.

Following the launch of the official x.AI website, Musk held a Twitter Spaces event to discuss the new company. He explained that he wanted to build safer AI technologies that are “maximally curious” without restricting progress with considerations of morality.

“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. “I think it is going to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than not-humanity.”

Additionally, Musk predicted that AI technologies that are smarter than humans could arrive in five to six years.

xAI is a separate company from Musk’s X Corp, although it says it will work closely with Twitter and Tesla, including using public Twitter data to train AI models.

xAI is currently composed of a team of 12 men led by Musk. The team members previously worked in tech and research departments at OpenAI, DeepMind, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla. The website is advertising that xAI is actively seeking experienced engineers and researchers to join the company.

xAI will work with advisor Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety (CAIS), an AI safety non-profit whose mission is “to reduce societal-scale risks from artificial intelligence.”

Musk incorporated xAI back in March, although there was no public statement  released at the time. In April, news leaked that Musk was seeking funding and had started to build the team while also publicly speaking out against the rapid development of AI technologies. The official launch of xAI was July 12.