Shubham Sawarkar
Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk have called for federal regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In a recent interview with Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Musk shared his fears about existing AI businesses training their systems to be “politically correct.” As a result, he wants to start a new AI initiative called “TruthGPT” which he envisions as a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”
Musk also expressed his vision for a regulatory agency that seeks insight into AI, solicits opinions from the industry, and has proposed rule-making, similar to the Federal Aviation Administration’s role in the aviation and aerospace industry. With an agency in place and industry-accepted rules, he believes that “we’ll have a better chance of advanced AI being beneficial to humanity.”
This move by Musk comes after he signed a letter calling for a pause on advanced AI research, which he believes can harm society. Musk’s new technology will reportedly compete with similar efforts by Sam Altman-led OpenAI, which was initially funded by Musk, Google’s DeepMind, and other AI initiatives around the world.
During the interview, Musk also discussed Twitter, the social media company he acquired in a $44 billion deal in October 2022. Musk expressed his surprise at the extent to which various regulatory agencies had access to Twitter, including direct messages that were not encrypted. As a result, he is promising that Twitter will allow users to “toggle encryption on” for direct messaging as early as next month.
Despite the reduced number of employees at Twitter, Musk believes that it will play a significant role in future elections, not just domestically but internationally. He has accused Twitter’s prior management and technology of unfairly benefiting Democrats and left-leaning users. However, Stanford researchers previously found “algorithmic amplification” of right-leaning content on Twitter before Musk took over.
