Often presented as one of the founders of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Elon Musk is however formally opposed to the conversational agent, which he accuses of censoring right-wing ideas. On Twitter, he is now attacking its implementation by Microsoft, “not sure” according to him.
Contrary to what some people claim, Elon Musk is not the creator of ChatGPT. If he is indeed one of the founders of OpenAI, which was at the time a non-profit company, Elon Musk left it in 2018, three years after its creation, because of multiple disagreements. He therefore did not witness the birth of ChatGPT, nor the transformation of OpenAI into a “capped profit” company, which led to it being valued and associated with Microsoft.
Does Elon Musk feel remorse? Since the appearance of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the neo-boss of Twitter has not stopped speaking ill of the chatbot, which he considers dangerous, in particular because of what he considers to be censorship of certain right-wing ideas (a speech that we know him well at Twitter). Since Microsoft integrated ChatGPT with Bing, Elon Musk is even tougher. He even comes out in favor of stopping the project, which is not “not secure” Today.
What if Elon Musk was right?
How to interpret Elon Musk’s fight against ChatGPT? If it is difficult to get into the billionaire’s head, everything suggests that he harbors a hatred against the management team of OpenAI, which obviously influences his thinking, while ChatGPT meets with monster success and fascinates the planet.
Elon Musk often tweets that he created OpenAI in a non-profit interest not to leave Google alone in this niche and that Microsoft’s use of it today would be a diversion from its original purpose. There is certainly some truth to his frustration, but can anyone really imagine that Musk wouldn’t have done the same if he had stayed?
Bad faith or not, many of the problems raised by Elon Musk are real. If ChatGPT fascinates today, our experiments with the conversational agent of Microsoft Bing prove that the IA lies a lot and, sometimes, becomes aggressive and pretends to be human. These behaviors are not normal and prove that the creativity of ChatGPT, coupled with an Internet search engine, is not perfectly framed by Microsoft. Elon Musk is right when he denounces an AI without any regulation. The businessman also denounces the treatment of the media who laugh at Bing’s abuses, when he considers them dangerous.
Elon Musk has always been afraid of AI. Although he says he is excited by the technological progress it makes possible, he has often presented this advance as “the greatest risk for our civilization”, as at a conference in Dubai on February 15. Should Microsoft listen to his advice while waiting to be able to better supervise ChatGPT?
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