Technology

The AI Arms Race

Just weeks ago, tech giants such as Elon Musk, Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak and many others signed a letter calling for a pause in training powerful AI systems as they believed that anything more advanced than GPT-4 poses a great risk to society.

This week, Elon Musk stated that he has plans to create a "TruthGPT" to rival OpenAI's evergrowing ChatGPT. The Twitter owner has claimed that ChatGPT was trained to be "politically correct" and hold certain biases.

Speaking to Fox News, Musk stated that his ChatGPT alternative would be the "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe". After calling for regulation on AI, it can only be assumed that his own chatbot would seek to follow those same guidelines.

The concern about the so-called truth comes from the fact that large language models such as ChatGPT and Google's BARD are answering users' queries with false information. The systems are able to answer questions with great confidence leading to people taking the information as fact.

As we know, AI works by using data and information that already exists and in ChatGPT's case, it has extremely limited knowledge of the world post-2021.

The development of different AI systems and chatbots comes with the development of the seemingly needed regulation. Elon Musk previously stated that he was a fan of governments stepping up to take control of advancements in AI. He followed his support of government action and claimed that his rocket and self-driving cars were safer than the technology.

Many different people and countries are taking different measures to tackle issues and the advancements of artificial intelligence. For example, Italy was the first nation to ban ChatGPT out of concern that the country's data protection was at risk. China also has published strict rules that ChatGPT must adhere to.

On top of many calling for a halt on progress for AI in the US, the White House has also stated that it welcomes public feedback regarding AI and how it should be regulated. This comes shortly after a blueprint for a Bill of Rights concerning the technology. It is said that the Bill has been drafted to protect privacy and jobs.

Reports surrounding Musk's own "TruthGPT" show that he is still building a team for the new system. On top of this, he also filed X.AI Corp as a new business on March 9th.

It will be curious to see how "TruthGPT" performs against its competitors.

Tej Kohli is a philanthropist, technologist and investor.

Find out more about Tej Kohli: Tej Kohli the technologist investing in human triumph and Tej Kohli the London tycoon with a generous streak.