A Bloomberg tech journalist is leaving to join Elon Musk's $1 billion AI company

Tech journalist Jack Clark is leaving Bloomberg to head up the communications operation at Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company.

Clark, who has been a reporter with Bloomberg since 2014 and covers Google, AI, and Amazon Web Services, announced on Tuesday that he will be joining OpenAI within the next few weeks.

OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company that wants to promote and develop open-source AI in an ethical way. It says that it wants to ensure that AI benefits humanity as a whole and isn't used to cause harm.

The company - sponsored by Musk, Facebook investor Peter Thiel, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and Y Combinator president Sam Altman - has been backed with over $1 billion and is linked with Elon Musk, who has cofounded Tesla, PayPal, and SpaceX.

"I'm joining OpenAI because AI is tremendously important," Clark wrote on Twitter.

"OpenAI has the potential to do immense good for the world and achieve breakthroughs in science as a byproduct!" he added in a separate tweet.

Clark, currently based in Oakland, California, said he intends to study machine learning and drive tractors in England, which is where he used to live, before starting at OpenAI.

The news was also announced on OpenAI's website as part of a wider recruitment update.

"Jack has spent the past few years writing about artificial intelligence and distributed systems, most recently at Bloomberg and BusinessWeek. His articles have covered technologies like memory networks, image generation, and reinforcement learning for robots, and issues like diversity within AI. As our Strategy and Communications Director, he will help with community outreach, policy, communications, and strategy," the organisation wrote.