Musk founded x.AI, is he trying to attack OpenAI or tell a new story about capital?

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Produced/Gyro Finance

Musk has started the "big job" again abruptly.

** On July 13, Musk announced a news on Twitter: the establishment of artificial intelligence company x.AI. **

According to the company’s official website, the x.AI team is led by Musk, with members from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto. The goal of x.AI is to understand the true nature of the universe, a somewhat elusive goal for an AI startup, but one that fits with Musk's usual grand narrative. SpaceX's goal is to make humans a multi-planetary species, and Tesla is determined to find a path to sustainable development and feed 8 billion people on the earth.

**Some key team members of x.AI have made outstanding contributions at the forefront of artificial intelligence research and development. **For example, Jimmy Ba is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, where he studied under the famous AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who led Google's AI program until he resigned. Christian Szegedy, as a research scientist at Google, has been working on core projects in artificial intelligence for many years

The x.AI team page also lists Dan Hendrycks as an advisor. Hendrycks, who heads the Center for AI Safety, an organization dedicated to mitigating the threat posed by artificial intelligence, gained fame for an open letter calling for governments to regulate AI before it destroys humanity , it is worth mentioning that Musk is also a co-signer of this letter.

x.AI is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has become a hub for artificial intelligence research and development, and the company website shows that it is actively recruiting experienced engineers and researchers to join the team. This probably means that those who join Musk's new business will be accepted with open arms, instead of facing the fate of layoffs after Musk took over Twitter.

01. The "Law of True Fragrance" that cannot be escaped

Before establishing x.AI, Musk expressed concern about the risks of artificial intelligence technology advancing too quickly without adequate guarantees.

**In March of this year, Musk signed a letter jointly with artificial intelligence developers and technology industry leaders calling for a moratorium on training powerful artificial intelligence models until their impact is better understood. **

Musk and artificial intelligence actually have a complicated historical origin. It is well known that Musk is one of the co-founders of OpenAI. But he left OpenAI's board in 2018 and withdrew a large grant. The US "Fortune" magazine reported at the time that the reason for leaving was that although Musk supported artificial intelligence, there was a "potential conflict of interest" between Tesla's intelligent driving technology and OpenAI. There are also reports that Musk offered to run OpenAI himself before leaving, but was rejected.

It is not difficult to understand why after leaving OpenAI, Musk has been criticizing the latter, even attacking the latter's biggest supporters-Microsoft and Bill Gates.

So what caused Musk's attitude to change again in a short period of time?

We can draw some conclusions from Musk's tweet. Musk stated on his Twitter that the goal of x.AI is to build a good AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) with the vision of understanding the true nature of the universe. He believes that such an AGI will be friendly to humans, rather than destroying them. The establishment of x.AI will also compete with companies such as OpenAI and Google to prevent a certain company from monopolizing the AI field.

**From Musk’s perspective, we can see that the establishment of x.AI corresponds to his own understanding of future AI development, and at the same time gives himself a “ticket” not to miss the future, preventing the formation of an industry in the AI field After monopolizing, you can't get a share of the action. The more straightforward conclusion is that Musk does not hate artificial intelligence, but hates that he is not the one who masters the highest technology of artificial intelligence. **

Musk currently leads six major companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company and now x.AI. Tesla, which he leads, has done a lot of work on artificial intelligence and automation and made it a strategic priority for the electric car manufacturer. Musk can use his multiple business ventures to build x.AI.

02, x.AI: Musk's new story?

But Musk's sudden change of attitude and announcement of the establishment of x.AI company is still unexpected.

**Musk previously mentioned that if the emergence of AGI is inevitable, then he faces two choices, either just bystanders or participate in it. "As bystanders, we have little influence on the outcome, and as participants, I think we can create a competitive alternative," he said, x.AI is trying to build a "good AGI" to Replacing Microsoft, Google and OpenAI. **

x.AI will work closely with his other companies, such as Twitter and Tesla. x.AI will leverage public data from Twitter to train its AI models. Musk also accused many AI companies of illegally using Twitter data for training, which caused Twitter's service to crash a week ago, so Twitter had to take measures to limit the number of Twitter views.

As for the cooperation between x.AI and Tesla, Musk said that x.AI will cooperate with Tesla on chips, and perhaps also on AI software. He believes that the cooperation with Tesla will be beneficial to Tesla. Accelerating the development of autonomous driving capabilities will have a mutually beneficial effect.

According to a document submitted to the California court on April 4 this year, Twitter has merged with a company called "X Corp", and Twitter currently "no longer" exists as an independent company. This means that the Twitter name now represents only a social networking platform and is no longer considered an independent company.

The official documents submitted to the California court also pointed out that "X Corp" is a company affiliated with "X Holdings Corp", which is the future parent company of Musk's current companies, including Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla and Tesla. The Boring Company may include the newly established x.AI in the future. Such a structure is reminiscent of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, YouTube, etc.

What is certain is that Musk has planned to create a group holding company code-named X that is mixed with AI technology. AI may be a key part of realizing this dream.

03. Conclusion

Musk has always been a controversial figure, with a profound influence in the fields of technology, business and culture.

As the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has made great achievements in the fields of technology and business. As the CEO of many companies, Musk is also generally regarded as a person with great leadership skills.

**Whether the newly established x.AI can replicate Musk's past success and lead AI into the next era is unknown. However, judging from Musk’s reverie but prudent attitude towards the development of AI, he is trying to find a new balance in the field of artificial intelligence, which can not only make technological progress serve human needs, but also pursue the truth and avoid prejudice. Find the balance. **

Jokingly, he founded x.AI may be trying to save humans who may be controlled by AI for the second time, and the first time he saved was when he participated in the creation of OpenAI.

Reference Article

Why did Musk call for a moratorium on AI training?

'Super app': Why did Musk turn Twitter into 'X' company?