- Elon Musk and Sam Altman are racing to create superintelligent AI.
- Musk said xAI plans to use Twitter data to train a "maximally curious" and "truth-seeking" superintelligence.
Elon Musk is throwing out challenge after challenge to tech CEOs — while he wants to physically fight Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, he's now racing with OpenAI to create AI smarter than humans.
On Saturday, Musk said on Twitter Spaces that his new company, xAI, is "definitely in competition" with OpenAI. He was outlining plans for developing "good" advanced AI — also called superintelligence.
Referring to superintelligence as Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, Musk said: "It really seems that at this point it looks like AGI is going to happen so there's two choices, either be a spectator or a participant. As a spectator, one can't do much to influence the outcome."
"You don't want to have a unipolar world where one company dominates in AI," he added.
Over a 100-minute discussion that drew over 1.6 million listeners, Musk explained his plan for xAI to use Twitter data to train superintelligent AI that is "maximally curious" and "truth-seeking."
Musk's relationship with OpenAI and Altman has been strained over the years. Semafor originally reported that Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, only to part ways with the organization due to differences with the board and Altman.
The Twitter-owner's comments come mere days after OpenAI said they're creating a new team dedicated to controlling superintelligence and ensuring that this advanced AI aligns with human interests.
"Currently, we don't have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue," OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and this new team's co-head Jan Leike wrote in a blog post, adding that though "superintelligent" artificial intelligence seemed far off, it could arrive within the decade.
Leading figures in tech — including Musk and OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman — have been sounding the alarm over how superintelligent AI poses an extinction risk to human civilization, on par with nuclear war and pandemics.
Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment which was sent outside regular business hours.