Elon Musk Sets Up AI Project for Twitter Despite Recent Call to Pause AI Development

Elon Musk is setting up an in-house generative artificial intelligence (AI) project for Twitter to train using its own collection of data. 

Business Insider reports that the Twitter CEO is “committed” to the effort after purchasing 10,000 datacenter-grade graphics processing units (GPUs) to be used at one of the company’s data hubs.  

Musk’s plan to build an AI tool is further supported by the recent hiring of Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss – two researchers from Alphabet’s research firm, DeepMind. 

Although the project is still in its early stages, the report suggests that it could potentially be used to change the platform's search functions or rebuild Twitter’s advertising business after experiencing significant drop in advertisers since Musk’s takeover. 

The recent news contradicts Elon Musk’s recent participation in a call to pause AI development.  

Last month, the Tesla-founder signed an open letter along with 1,000 industry leaders that urged AI labs to halt the training of large AI systems for at least six months, applicable to systems “more powerful than GPT-4.”  

“This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities,” the letter wrote. 

With the setup of a new AI project, some believe Musk signed the letter only as a way for him to better catch up to OpenAI’s fast-growing GPT-4 with his own AI developments, as the CEO has previously criticized the AI firm.