xAI: Elon Musk’s Endeavor To Unlock Mysteries Of The Universe via @sejournal, @kristileilani

Elon Musk announced the formation of xAI, a new artificial intelligence company, on Twitter.

Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2023

The mission of xAI, according to its website, is to “understand the true nature of the universe.”

The company may develop Musk’s vision of a truthful ChatGPT alternative.

What we need is TruthGPT

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023

Or maybe its AI product will be one that even the AI community won’t understand.

Even the AI community doesn’t understand

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2023

What Is xAI?

The website states that xAI is an independent company from X Corp, but it plans to collaborate with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to achieve its mission.

The Tesla AI/software team is truly exceptional & I never give false praise

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2023

The team includes AI experts from companies like DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, and Microsoft Research, who have contributed to pioneering optimization methods, normalization techniques, adversarial example discovery, innovative analyses, and breakthrough AI systems like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.

Screenshot from x.ai, July 2023

Dan Hendrycks, Director of the Center for AI Safety, is an advisor.

Trending Tweets About xAI

xAI’s team and Musk’s biggest Twitter supporters shared excitement about the announcement on Twitter.

Cofounder Greg Yang invited mathematicians and theorists excited about AI for math to reach out via direct message.

Finally launched https://t.co/qDiFHUDZMv!

The mathematics of deep learning is profound, beautiful, and unreasonably effective. Developing the "theory of everything" for large neural networks will be central to taking AI to the next level. Conversely, this AI will enable everyone…

— Greg Yang (@TheGregYang) July 12, 2023

Yang had left Microsoft Research in May for the “next adventure.”

Now, I'm thrilled for my next adventure. Stay tuned 😉

— Greg Yang (@TheGregYang) May 15, 2023

One of the first tweets by the company’s official Twitter account posed a profound question:

What are the most fundamental unanswered questions?

— xAI (@xai) July 12, 2023

Musk and over 12.1k other Twitter users replied:

And what are the most fundamental unknown questions?

Once you know the right question to ask, the answer is often the easy part, as my hero, Douglas Adams, would say. pic.twitter.com/Bo6v8E1Ooq

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2023

Yuhuai(Tony) Wu, whose website mentions a “stealth startup” after working at Google with future xAI colleague Christian Szegedy, shared the following shortly after the announcement.

Solve math and understand the universe

— Yuhuai (Tony) Wu (@Yuhu_ai_) July 12, 2023

Jimmy Ba, another xAI affiliate, includes a Twitter profile disclaimer that “All my posts are generated by GPT.”

xAI Corp

At the bottom of the official website is a standard copyright disclaimer with xAI Corp.

This is what I found beyond the news about xAI.

Screenshot from Yahoo, July 2023

Searching for Musk’s X Corp often yields similarly matching yet unrelated (?) results.

Screenshot from Fandom, July 2023

The Future Of Elon Musk’s New AI Venture

Will xAI develop something more significant than the next ChatGPT alternative? Only time will tell.

xAI included a link to a recruitment form for engineers and researchers in the Bay Area who want to join xAI’s “mission to understand the universe.”

Interested applicants should include their Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Scholar links and details about their most exceptional work.

@xAI will also host a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, July 14, to let those interested meet the team and ask questions about their planned exploration of the universe.

Featured image: kovop/Shutterstock