(Weekly Digest) Elon Musk Creating a Rival AI to ChatGPT, No ChatGPT5, Amazon Launches Bedrock
Another busy week in AI. Let's see what happened.
Musk Reportedly Developing AI Challenger to ChatGPT Creator
Billionaire Elon Musk announced his intention to introduce an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that will compete with the AI offerings of Microsoft and Google.
What do we know about this new company?
The company was incorporated in Nevada on March 9, and it is registered in the same state where Twitter's parent company, X Corp., is also registered, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Elon Musk is listed as the sole director in the state filing, while Jared Birchall, CEO of Musk's chip-implant company Neuralink and managing director of Musk's family office Excession, is listed as secretary. Birchall also serves on the board of Musk's tunneling entity The Boring Company. Birchall has a background as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs and a wealth adviser at Morgan Stanley before joining Musk.
X.AI has hired Igor Babuschkin, a senior research engineer in Silicon Valley from Deepmind, Google's sister company, to lead the effort, according to Insider. Babuschkin has previously worked at OpenAI during the pandemic and was part of the Deepmind London team. He has also interned at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, a renowned international research institute.
Another significant hire for X.AI is Deepmind engineer Manuel Kroiss, who co-authored the 2021 Deepmind paper titled "Launchpad: A programming model for distributed machine learning research."
Sources cited by the Financial Times suggest that Musk may plan to use Twitter data to train X.AI's large language model, considering his tweet in December where he mentioned OpenAI's access to Twitter's database for training, which was subsequently paused.
Musk has reportedly purchased around 10,000 GPUs commonly used for large language models for Twitter, according to Insider. During a recent Twitter Spaces session with the BBC, where over three million people reportedly tuned in, Musk neither confirmed nor denied the Insider report. Instead, he mentioned that Tesla and Twitter, like other companies, are buying GPUs, and also praised Tesla's Dojo supercomputer platform for its potential.
One challenge Musk may face is the significant amount of electricity and water consumption associated with large language models. A research paper by professors from the University of California and the University of Texas noted that "ChatGPT needs to 'drink' a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of roughly 20-50 questions and answers."
To fund X.AI, the company has authorized the sale of 100 million shares and is reportedly seeking interest from investors of SpaceX and Tesla, as reported by the Financial Times. Operating costs for more powerful AI models, such as those used by OpenAI, can be substantial, with estimated costs of around $544.5 million in 2022, as per documents seen by Fortune.
During an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Tuesday, Elon Musk expressed his desire to create a chatbot called TruthGPT that he claims will be a "maximum truth-seeking AI," although the specifics of this claim are unclear. Musk stated that he hopes to establish a third option to OpenAI and Google with the intention of doing more good than harm.
Fighting against Woke AI
Since the widespread popularity of ChatGPT since its launch on November 30, Musk and Altman have clashed over the issue of censorship regarding ChatGPT's responses to prompts that OpenAI considers inappropriate or harmful. Musk, who claims to be an advocate for free speech, tweeted about the dangers of training AI to be "woke" or dishonest.
Recently, Musk called for a pause in the development of AI across the industry, following OpenAI's release of the more advanced GPT-4. He also signed a petition by the Future of Life Institute, which received over 26,000 signatures.
Did you know?
X holds significance in multiple aspects of Musk's world.
It's the name of his child with pop star Grimes.
It was the original name of his startup X.com, which later evolved into PayPal.
Recently, it was revealed in court documents that X is the corporate name of Twitter.
Furthermore, it's also associated with Musk's new venture, X.AI, for which he has been actively recruiting AI engineers from competitors and potentially procuring numerous GPUs.
No GPT-5
During a discussion on the risks posed by AI, OpenAI's CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman, confirmed that the company is not currently training GPT-5, which is assumed to be the next iteration of its AI language model after GPT-4 was released in March. Altman was responding to an open letter calling for a pause in the development of AI systems that are "more powerful than GPT-4," citing concerns about the safety of future systems.
Altman stated that the letter lacked technical nuance and erroneously claimed that OpenAI was currently training GPT-5. He emphasized that the company is focusing on addressing the safety implications of their work beyond GPT-4.
Sam Altman's confirmation that OpenAI is not currently working on GPT-5 is unlikely to assuage the concerns of individuals worried about AI safety. The company is still expanding the capabilities of GPT-4, such as by linking it to the internet, while others in the industry are developing similarly ambitious tools that enable AI systems to act on behalf of users. Additionally, there is likely ongoing work to optimize GPT-4, and OpenAI may even release a version like GPT-4.5 before GPT-5, illustrating how version numbers can be misleading.
Amazon Launches Bedrock
Amazon has launched Amazon Bedrock, a new AI platform designed for businesses that use Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Bedrock includes a suite of generative AI tools that can create chatbots, summarize and generate text, and classify images based on a prompt. The platform is aimed at assisting AWS customers in creating targeted ad campaigns and generating social media posts, display ads, and web copy, among other applications.
According to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s annual shareholder letter, the company is investing heavily in large language models and generative AI technologies, which he considers transformative. Amazon's move into generative AI follows similar efforts by other tech giants like Microsoft and Google, which released their own generative AI chatbots earlier this year.
In the rapidly expanding realm of generative AI, Amazon's Bedrock AI platform is poised to compete by offering businesses the ability to streamline tasks and efficiently produce content. Amazon's significant investment in large language models and generative AI technology suggests that Bedrock could become a major player in the AI industry, empowering businesses with tools to improve operations and catalyze innovation.
Great Post Greg!