Elon Musk Proposes ‘Third Horse’ in Google-Microsoft AI Race

Elon Musk has restated his interest in competing with Microsoft and Google in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

The Twitter and Tesla CEO said the two tech giants need a competitor in the AI game and posited that his companies could play a role to challenge them, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (May 23).

“I think there should be a significant third horse in the race,” Musk said, speaking at WSJ’s CEO Council Summit in London, per the report.

He argued that Tesla and Twitter could work with an AI company, similar to the Microsoft and OpenAI collaboration, the report said.

Musk said last month that he wanted to see a new model for generative AI, as well as government regulations for the industry.

In April, Musk discussed OpenAI’s alignment with Microsoft and Google’s ownership of DeepMind.

“I think I will create a third option,” Musk said at the time. “I’ll be starting very late in the game, of course.”

Musk said at the time his TruthGPT will be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”

“This might be the best path to safety in that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe — hopefully, they would think that,” Musk said at the time.

The CEO mentioned those concerns about AI again in his WSJ event speech.

“It’s a small likelihood of annihilating humanity, but it’s not zero,” Musk said Tuesday.

It was that sort of concern that led the AI watchdog group Future of Life Institute to pen an open letter in March on the potential dangers of the technology.

The letter read, in part: “Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

Among the first signatories of the letter: Elon Musk.