Elon Musk Tells Tucker Carlson He’ll Launch ChatGPT Rival After Taking Credit for Original: ‘I Came Up With the Name’ (Video)

The billionaire wants to create an AI that “understands the nature of the universe” and won’t be taught to “lie”

Though he’s barely started on his vision to transform Twitter into a super-app, Elon Musk now says he’s going to dive into the artificial intelligence chatbot arena to save the world from “political correctness.”

Musk told Tucker Carlson on Monday that he plans to create his own chatbot, after taking credit for jumpstarting the development of ChatGPT, the hugely popular chatbot software from OpenAI.

“I’m going to start something which I called TruthGPT, or a maximum truth seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk told Tucker Carlson on Monday.

Elsewhere in his “Tucker Carlson Tonight” interview, the embattled Twitter CEO boasted that he came up with the name “ChatGPT” as well as the concept and “had a number of dinners around the Bay Area with some of the leading figures in AI” through its development.

Musk was one of a group of high profile early funders of OpenAI in 2015, and an original co-chair of the company behind ChatGPT that is working with Microsoft. He told Carlson he recruited the initial team, in particular naming Ilya Sutskever, who is considered one of the co-founders of the company and who Musk said “was really quite fundamental to the success of OpenAI.”

“I put a tremendous amount of effort into recruiting Ilya and he changed his mind a few times, and ultimately decided to go with OpenAI. But if he had not gone with OpenAI, OpenAI would not have succeeded,” Musk said.

“I really put a lot a lot of effort into creating this organization to serve as a counterweight to Google,” continued Musk, who stepped down in 2018 to focus on Tesla and SpaceX. “And then I kind of took my eye off the ball, I guess, and they are now closed source. And they are obviously for profit, and they’re closely aligned with Microsoft and in effect, Microsoft has a very strong say if not directly controls at this point.”

He continued, saying, “So you really have an OpenAI/ Microsoft situation, and then Google DeepMind are the two heavyweights in this arena.”

Carlson remarked that “it seems like the world needs a third option.”

“I think I will create an option, although it’s starting very late in the game, of course,” Musk replied. “But I will. I will try to create a third option. And that third option, hopefully does more good than harm.”

The intention with OpenAI “was obviously to do good, but it’s not clear whether it’s actually doing good or whether it’s — I can’t tell at this point,” Musk continued. “Except that I’m worried about the fact that it’s being trained to be politically correct, which is simply another way of saying untruthful things.”

“There’s certainly a path to AI dystopia, it is to train an AI to be deceptive,” he stated. “So yeah, I’m going to start something which I call TruthGPT, or a maximum truth seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”

Musk has been recruiting AI researchers from Google to launch a rival to OpenAI, Reuters reported, and last month registered a company named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada.

Musk was among a group of tech executives who called for a six-month pause in developing new AI systems, citing potential risks to safety. “It has the potential of civilizational destruction,” Musk told Carlson.

But he believes he can tame the tech.

“I think this, this might be the best path to safety, in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans, because we are an interesting part of the universe,” Musk said.

Watch a clip of Musk’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” interview in the video above.

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