Twitter is working on a secret AI project – despite CEO Elon Musk claiming such technology will signal ‘catastrophe’ for humanity
- Former staff revealed that Twitter has invested in high-performance hardware
- This could be used to accelerate the training of large language models
- However, recently Elon Musk has criticised developments in AI technology
Twitter is working on a secret artificial intelligence (AI) technology that will be able to generate written content, former employees have revealed.
If true, this firmly goes against CEO Elon Musk’s personal view that such technology will be ‘catastrophic’ for humanity.
At the end of last month, the billionaire boss, along with a thousand other tech leaders, signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development.
They argued that companies are taking part in a ‘dangerous race’ by advancing the technology so quickly, while not yet knowing the full scope of the risk involved.
The ex-Twitter staff told Insider that Mr Musk has recently purchased 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) for his platform.
Twitter is working on a secret artificial intelligence (AI) technology that will be able to generate written content, former employees have revealed. If true, this firmly goes against CEO Elon Musk’s personal view that such technology will be ‘catastrophic’ for humanity
This is high-performance hardware capable of the complex mathematical calculations required for rendering graphics, like images and videos.
WHAT ARE GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNITS?
Graphics processing units, or GPUs, are hardware capable of the complex mathematical calculations.
They are known to be able to render graphics for computationally intensive applications, like video games or scientific simulations.
However they can also be used to accelerate the training of large language models (LLMs) – AI systems that learnt to generate human-like responses from huge amounts of text data.
They can also be used to accelerate the training of large language models (LLMs) – AI systems that learnt to generate human-like responses from huge amounts of text data – due to their high processing power.
The anonymous leakers added that whatever Mr Musk is working on involves an LLM, but is currently in its early stages.
However, the former employees said that Mr Musk’s recent purchases suggest he is ‘committed’ to its development.
Experts told Insider that each GPU could cost about $10,000 (£8,000), meaning he has likely spent tens of millions on the project so far.
But he has not just invested in hardware, as the Tesla boss has poached two top employees from DeepMind, the AI subsidiary of tech giant Alphabet.
The employees who spoke to Insider may have left the company after Mr Musk began slashing staff in November last year.
At the time, he defended the decision to fire 3,700 people, saying: ‘There is no choice when the company is losing over $4mn/day.’
He laid off another 200 employees in February, bring Twitter’s workforce down to under 2,000 – a sharp fall from the 7,500 employed when he first took over.
The news of Twitter’s AI project comes less than two weeks after Mr Musk joined experts in signing an open letter calling for a hiatus in the development of AI
The news of Twitter’s AI project comes less than two weeks after Mr Musk joined experts in signing an open letter calling for a hiatus in the development of AI.
The letter, published on the website of the Musk-funded Future of Life Institute, said that ‘AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.’
The signatories, who included academics and tech titans like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, argued that the pause should be used to bolster regulation and ensure the systems were safe.
Critics however called the letter a ‘hot mess’ of ‘AI hype’ that even misrepresented an academic paper.
Mr Musk has been critical of AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT in the past. He is now reportedly developing a rival. Pictured: Mr Musk commented on a MailOnline story which highlights bias replies from ChatGPT, saying it was ‘extremely concerning’
Bill Gates hits back at AI critics who warn tech will destroy humanity – READ MORE HERE
Bill Gates did not sign the letter with Elon Musk, which calls for the development of AI to stop for six months. Gates says the pause would not solve the challenges faced
It is not yet clear what the Twitter AI could be used for, but the Insider report says it could be used as a search or advertising tool.
Mr Musk has had problems with retaining advertisers in the past, losing 50 of his top spenders after making changes to the ‘blue tick’ verification process in November.
This was when he rolled out the first iteration of the Twitter Blue subscription service, which gave subscribers the badge of authenticity on their profile.
But users were quick to take advantage of the opportunity, and accounts impersonating famous people and corporations flooded the platform.
Advertisers were said to have lost trust in Twitter after hearing about Mr Musk’s plans to relax content moderation on the platform.
This involved granting a reprieve to accounts that have not ‘broken the law or engaged in egregious spam’.
According to Bloomberg, the CEO fired many contractors who worked on policing the deluge of tweets including misinformation and hate speech under the site’s rules.
Twitter contains huge amounts of data that could train an LLM, and Mr Musk tweeted that he prevented OpenAI from using it to train ChatGPT in December.
Big tech companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft have spent years working on AI systems – previously known as machine learning or big data – to help with translations, search and targeted advertising.
Twitter replied to MailOnline’s request for comment with a poop emoji, which has become its practice under Mr Musk.
Anonymous sources told The Information that his goal is to develop ‘a trustworthy and reliable’ chatbot to rival ChatGPT.
ChatGPT was trained on a huge sample of text from the internet, and can understand human language, conduct conversations with humans and generate detailed text.
When it was released by start-up OpenAI in December, it opened the eyes of the public to just how powerful AI technology has become in recent years.
Musk cofounded OpenAI with Sam Altman, its current CEO, but he left the company in 2018 .
Microsoft has since announced it is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI and put its technology to work in its Bing internet search service.
Elon Musk’s hatred of AI explained: Billionaire believes it will spell the end of humans – a fear Stephen Hawking shared
Elon Musk wants to push technology to its absolute limit, from space travel to self-driving cars — but he draws the line at artificial intelligence.
The billionaire first shared his distaste for AI in 2014, calling it humanity’s ‘biggest existential threat’ and comparing it to ‘summoning the demon.’
At the time, Musk also revealed he was investing in AI companies not to make money but to keep an eye on the technology in case it gets out of hand.
His main fear is that in the wrong hands, if AI becomes advanced, it could overtake humans and spell the end of mankind, which is known as The Singularity.
That concern is shared among many brilliant minds, including the late Stephen Hawking, who told the BBC in 2014: ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.
‘It would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate.’
Despite his fear of AI, Musk has invested in the San Francisco-based AI group Vicarious, in DeepMind, which has since been acquired by Google, and OpenAI, creating the popular ChatGPT program that has taken the world by storm in recent months.
During a 2016 interview, Musk noted that he and OpenAI created the company to ‘have democratisation of AI technology to make it widely available.’
Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, the company’s CEO, but in 2018 the billionaire attempted to take control of the start-up.
His request was rejected, forcing him to quit OpenAI and move on with his other projects.
In November, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which became an instant success worldwide.
The chatbot uses ‘large language model’ software to train itself by scouring a massive amount of text data so it can learn to generate eerily human-like text in response to a given prompt.
ChatGPT is used to write research papers, books, news articles, emails and more.
But while Altman is basking in its glory, Musk is attacking ChatGPT.
He says the AI is ‘woke’ and deviates from OpenAI’s original non-profit mission.
‘OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft, Musk tweeted in February.
The Singularity is making waves worldwide as artificial intelligence advances in ways only seen in science fiction – but what does it actually mean?
In simple terms, it describes a hypothetical future where technology surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution.
Experts have said that once AI reaches this point, it will be able to innovate much faster than humans.
There are two ways the advancement could play out, with the first leading to humans and machines working together to create a world better suited for humanity.
For example, humans could scan their consciousness and store it in a computer in which they will live forever.
The second scenario is that AI becomes more powerful than humans, taking control and making humans its slaves – but if this is true, it is far off in the distant future.
Researchers are now looking for signs of AI reaching The Singularity, such as the technology’s ability to translate speech with the accuracy of a human and perform tasks faster.
Former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil predicts it will be reached by 2045.
He has made 147 predictions about technology advancements since the early 1990s – and 86 per cent have been correct.
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