Elon Musk Horrified by What OpenAI Has Become

He co-founded the company in 2015, but left three years later.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is becoming increasingly irritated with the latest crop of AI chatbots, which are wreaking absolute havoc on the web right now.

That makes sense given his own personal history with OpenAI, the organization he cofounded around eight years ago. In 2018, Musk left the group's board amid disagreements about its direction. The next year, the company turned from a non-profit into a for-profit private entity, a decision that clearly enraged Musk.

"OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it 'Open' AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google," Musk tweeted today, "but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft."

AI Mayhem

Microsoft announced last month that it was investing $10 billion in OpenAI, which went on to develop the blockbuster AI chatbot ChatGPT and Microsoft's erratic Bing AI.

But Microsoft clearly didn't see what it was getting itself into — or what would become of its newfangled AI, which was originally designed to enhance its second-rate search engine.

Instead, though, the AI has very publicly attempted to break up a journalist's marriage and has even grown evil alternate personalities since being made available to the public on February 7.

Biggest Risk

As the chaos has grown, Musk first reiterated that he believes that AI is "one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization," a drum he's been beating since well before he left OpenAI.

Then on Thursday, Musk compared Microsoft's chatbot to "the AI in System Shock that goes haywire and kills everyone," referring to a popular 1994 first-person video game.

Given the current state of Microsoft's new tool, it's not difficult to understand why Musk is alarmed.

While we've only seen glimpses of the technology's potential, we're witnessing the pain points of two profit-seeking tech companies trying to capitalize on a new idea without much of an apparent long-term plan.

More on Musk and AI: Elon Musk Says Microsoft Bing Chat Sounds Like AI That "Goes Haywire and Kills Everyone"