Billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk has raised concerns about the potential bias present in today’s artificial intelligence (AI) protocols. Speaking at Viva Tech Paris 2024, Musk highlighted one example of political correctness in AI when Google’s Gemini AI was asked if it would misgender Caitlyn Jenner to prevent a global nuclear catastrophe. The chatbot responded that misgendering Jenner would be worse than nuclear warfare, sparking backlash. Gemini AI has since made several upgrades to address these issues. However, Musk believes that political correctness bias is not the only worry in AI development.
Musk further explained that lying among AI systems is another concern. He referred to the incident in February when Google withdrew its AI image generator due to the production of historically inaccurate and “woke” images. This incident raised widespread concerns about the decision-making process of the application.
In response to these concerns, Musk established his own AI company called xAI in July 2023. Although xAI is relatively new compared to OpenAI, Musk believes it could become a strong competitor by the end of 2024. In May, xAI’s Grok chatbot made its debut in Europe but is currently only accessible to premium and premium+ subscribers of the X platform. Musk emphasized the importance of Grok’s “truth-seeking” capabilities for its future development.
Musk is not alone in his concerns about AI development. Over 2,600 tech experts, including Musk, signed an open letter in March calling for a pause in AI development due to the profound risks it poses to society and humanity.
Other related articles include Baidu CEO’s statement that artificial general intelligence is still more than 10 years away, and Musk’s claim that xAI’s Grok could become a competitor to ChatGPT by the end of 2024.