TIME Names Elon Musk an AI Leader in its TIME100 AI List

Image: TIME

TIME named Elon Musk one of the leaders in AI development in its TIME100 AI list. He is at the forefront of the industry’s development via several of his companies.

TIME magazine unveiled its first list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI) for the year. Elon Musk entered it in the Leaders segment. Although the extraordinary engineer has great fears of AI, he also actively helps its development, striving to make it as safe as possible.

Back in the early 2010s, he invested millions of dollars into artificial intelligence startup DeepMind. The company was purchased by Google in 2014. Musk worried that Google would not take AI safety seriously. Together with Sam Altman, he founded a new artificial intelligence company, OpenAI. It was to be open source and counter Google's growing dominance in AI. The company needed to develop what they believed was a more responsible approach to creating artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is a hypothetical future artificial intelligence system that can do everything a human brain can do. In 2018, Musk left the company due to disagreements with the team. OpenAI has become a closed company seeking profit instead of developing safe AI.

In July 2023, Musk announced the founding of a new AI company, xAI. The goal of xAI is to “understand the true nature of the universe.” “The overarching goal of xAI is to build a good AGI with the overarching purpose of just trying to understand the universe,” Musk said.

In addition, via Tesla, Musk is working on self-driving cars. According to current information, autonomous driving will be achieved with the help of AGI. The engineer is also busy developing Neuralink. The company's goal is to implant microchips in the human brain that will allow people to communicate directly with computers. Another Tesla project, Optimus, is a humanoid robot designed to perform various tasks in the physical world.

Musk is committed to developing safe AI, which is why he has been vocal about the security measures that should be put in place for the field. He played a significant role in bringing concerns to the general public. In March, Musk signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI development and training until regulatory action was in place.

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production, in the sense that... it has the potential of civilization destruction,” Musk said.

© 2023, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.

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