Elon Musk’s AI ambitions for Twitter present that a number of the individuals calling for the tech to ‘pause’ appear to be performing out of their very own self-interest

• Elon Musk-owned Twitter bought 10,000 GPUs, apparently to get into the generative AI increase.
• This transfer goes towards Musk’s open-letter plea for corporations to decelerate AI improvement.

It appears to be like like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman was proper: some execs need to pause AI improvement out of their very own self-interest.

Take Elon Musk as “Exhibit A.”

Insider reported Tuesday that Twitter, which is owned by Musk, lately bought 10,000 graphics processing items (GPUs) in an obvious bid to get in on the generative AI increase.

Whereas it isn’t clear what Twitter will use the GPUs for, it was reported in February that Musk is seeking to create an AI chatbot that can rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That may dovetail properly with Musk’s said ambitions to construct Twitter into an “every part app.” And Twitter has lately attracted researchers away from Google’s famed DeepMind AI lab.

Nonetheless, the funding in GPUs appears to run counter to what Musk preached in March, when he signed an open letter asking for a pause on AI improvement to present society an opportunity to think about the ramifications of huge language fashions like OpenAI’s GPT-4.

That letter, which was signed by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and over a thousand different trade figures, was met with criticism. Some tech elites, together with Invoice Gates and Meta CEO Andrew Bosworth, decried the notion of a pause as “unrealistic.”

Hoffman, for his half, advised CNBC final week that the letter was an try by some events concerned to get trade leaders like OpenAI to “decelerate” so that they “can velocity up.” As Musk’s one-time enterprise accomplice, he additionally stated that the Twitter proprietor’s high-profile participation within the letter was a strategic transfer.

And Twitter’s buy of these GPUs would undoubtedly replicate an acceleration in AI funding. For context, these GPUs probably value Twitter hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. And in 2020, Microsoft advised the world that it constructed a supercomputer encompassing 10,000 GPUs — the identical quantity that Twitter simply purchased — completely for OpenAI’s use.

The transfer comes as Musk has grown vital of OpenAI, attacking its degree of transparency and calling it a “ruthless company monopoly.” He is bought historical past with the corporate: Musk cofounded OpenAI, began as a nonprofit AI analysis lab, with Sam Altman, Hoffman, and Peter Thiel in 2015. He left the corporate in 2018, citing a battle of curiosity as his flagship firm, Tesla bought extra into AI.

In December, just a few months after taking full possession of Twitter, Musk went as far as to tweet about how he cut OpenAI’s access to Twitter, which was used to coach OpenAI’s language fashions.

For somebody who says he desires to pause AI improvement, Musk appears to be doing the very reverse of that. It is wanting extra like his plea to decelerate AI to guard humanity was a minimum of partially a enterprise transfer supposed to make OpenAI take a step again whereas he took a step ahead.