Elon Musk seems bitten by the artificial intelligence bug

Elon Musk has reportedly approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks with the aim of setting up a research lab to develop an alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The move stems from Musk’s dissatisfaction with safeguards OpenAI has included in ChatGPT to prevent it from producing text that could offend users, according to a report in The Information.

Musk and some conservative commentators have also accused OpenAI of training ChatGPT to be “woke”.

Writing for the National Review in January, Nate Hochman said he found a built-in ideological bias in ChatGPT.

“It’s not clear if this was characteristic of ChatGPT from the start or if it’s a recent reform of the algorithm, but it seems that the crackdown on the ‘misinformation’ we’ve seen on technology platforms in recent years – which often see more brazen efforts to suppress or silence viewpoints that oppose progressive orthodoxy – are now also a feature of ChatGPT,” he wrote. .

Avoid controversy

Will Duffield, a political analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington, DC think tank, counters, however, that what appears to be ideological bias to some is actually an attempt to avoid controversy.

“Woke is the wrong frame,” Duffield told TechNewsWorld.

“OpenAI’s chatbot, as well as DALL-E, have been tuned to avoid controversial topics,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean they’ve been tuned to be woken up. By avoiding controversy, they reflect what society as a whole has deemed controversial.

For example, he explained that if you ask ChatGPT to write a poem about Biden and one about Trump, it will write the poem about Biden but not Trump.

“It’s not because anyone at OpenAI tuned the model to avoid Trump, but because Trump is a controversial figure,” he said. “If you read everything that’s been written about Biden and Trump over the past 10 years, you’re going to come away with the impression that Trump is more controversial.”

Musk could offer transparency

Greg Sterling, co-founder of Near Media, a news, commentary and analysis site, also found the woke criticism unwarranted.

“OpenAI and Microsoft are trying to prevent ChatGPT from generating hateful or racist content, which is both responsible and pragmatic,” Sterling told TechNewsWorld. “Any brand associated with hate speech or AI misinformation will be tainted in the public mind.”

But Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst at SmartTech Research in San Jose, Calif., argued that many examples have been reported in the media of the apparent awakening of OpenAI technology.

“In all fairness, OpenAI is still in a testing phase, and given some of the negative market feedback about its alleged revival, I suspect OpenAI will revert to that over time,” Vena told TechNewsWorld.

He added that if Musk is part of the AI ​​landscape, that could be a good thing for the technology.

“Given the management approach he’s brought to Twitter — whether you like it or not — his focus on transparency might be a good thing,” he said.

“I would expect him to focus on transparency of algorithms that Twitter might use with its own ChatGPT implementation, and you might see him promoting a strong code of conduct,” he continued.

“I think we should be open-minded about the changes he might bring to a ChatGPT game,” Vena added.

traffic magnet

Musk’s report entering the AI ​​chat space could benefit Twitter, observed Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology consultancy in New York.

“ChatGPT has become an amazing traffic magnet, and when you’re in the attention game, like Twitter, it’s impossible to ignore. You have to respond to that,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“AI could also give users a way to tap into the incredible amount of data and insights flowing through Twitter every day,” he continued.

“It’s always been difficult to follow the things you want to follow on Twitter because there’s so much noise,” Rubin added. “AI can be helpful in this area.”

A Musk AI could also benefit from its relationship with Twitter. “He has the data from Twitter, which could be an interesting body of information to train the AI ​​on,” Duffield said.

“If Musk really wants to differentiate his AI product, he should use a model that users can run on their own machines and set their own weights and biases,” he added. “That kind of freedom will ultimately be most important in the AI ​​space.”

Bing AI is coming to Windows 11

Bob O’Donnell, founder and chief analyst of Technalysis Research, a market research and technology consulting firm in Foster City, California, predicted that many companies will develop great language models like ChatGPT.

“Since they are incredibly expensive to develop, you need someone with a Musk’s money to fund these kinds of efforts,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“I don’t know if anything Musk will do will make a huge difference,” he added. “What I do know is that we’re going to see a number of companies trying this with a number of different perspectives. Ultimately it will come down to what people find useful.

As Musk prepares to enter the realm of AI chat, Microsoft continues to expand the use of the technology in its products. He announced on Tuesday that the latest version of Windows 11 will integrate AI-powered Bing directly into the taskbar.

“The search box is one of the most used features on Windows, with more than half a billion users each month, and now with the typeable Windows search box and the new AI-powered Bing at front and center of this experience, you’ll be empowered to find the answers you’re looking for, faster than ever before,” Microsoft chief product officer Panos Panay wrote in a company blog post.

Microsoft’s aggressive rollout of AI-powered products has had a few hiccups, but slowing down doesn’t seem like an option.

“There will be setbacks, but it’s more about Microsoft’s ability to adapt on the fly and keep up to date with new guardrails and better training,” said Jason Wong, vice president. president and analyst at Gartner, a research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut. , told TechNewsWorld.

“There’s so much potential to be gained with generative AI that it’s worth being ahead rather than behind the market at this point,” he said.