xAI founder Elon Musk
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On a warm night in San Francisco earlier this week, Elon Musk stood on a small round coffee table bathed in purple light. Crowds of AI engineers and researchers gathered around him, some sitting on a close-by staircase, because the billionaire suggested they join his fledgling AI company xAI.
At the event, a recruiting party for potential employees, Musk’s major selling point was speed – he praised the corporate’s speed in developing products and developing AI tools in a quick and versatile environment, comparing xAI to an SR-71 jet . “No SR-71 Blackbird has ever been shot down and it had only one strategy: accelerate,” Musk said. accordingly a participant.
The location was fitting: The Pioneer Building in the town’s Mission District, a 122-year-old former truck factory and most recently home to OpenAI, ChatGPT’s juggernaut maker led by co-founder Sam Altman. xAI had just moved into the constructing, Musk said, attendees said Forbes.
Musk is just not afraid to take care of OpenAI. He co-founded the corporate with Altman and others in 2015 before leaving three years later after an alleged internal power struggle. Since then, Musk has sued the corporate twice, accusing it of abandoning its mission to develop artificial intelligence to learn humanity. (He filed his most up-to-date lawsuit in August after withdrawing an identical lawsuit in June.)
“He really wants to be the counterpart to OpenAI,” said certainly one of the participants, Marvin von Hagen Forbes when asked in regards to the evening’s key takeaways. “They really want to move on and say, ‘Okay, we’re the good guys now.'”
At the event, Musk spoke to about 150 people, mostly men, and answered questions from attendees for about an hour and a half. During the talk, Musk said he didn’t trust OpenAI, calling it “closed-loop, maximum-profit AI,” one attendee said.
xAI didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Musk’s comments – in addition to the placement of the office – illustrate the upcoming role OpenAI plays for xAI. Musk hosted the event on the identical day as OpenAI’s annual Dev Day, which some imagine was greater than a coincidence. At the event, Musk joked in regards to the creation of “BasedGPT”. xAI cleared out OpenAI’s furniture from the office the day before the event, but at the very least one remnant stays: A printed photo clipping of OpenAI President Greg Brockman hangs on the ceiling of certainly one of the rooms, two attendees said. (Brockman is currently on leave from OpenAI until the top of the 12 months.) Von Hagen estimated that about 10 current OpenAI employees were in attendance.
The Verge earlier reported some details in regards to the open day.
“He really desires to be the counterpart to OpenAI. They really need to maneuver on and say, ‘Okay, we’re the nice guys now.'”
The gap between xAI and OpenAI is large. Altman has turn out to be the face of generative AI and ChatGPT is a household name. Meanwhile, xAI, which launched last July, is best known for its Grok AI model, a paid subscription feature on X, the social platform that Musk owns. Earlier this week, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round at a $157 billion valuation, the biggest enterprise capital funding round ever. But Musk hasn’t slowed down in terms of raising money. In May, xAI announced a $6 billion Series B from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Valor Equity Partners, with a valuation of $24 billion.
During the extensive question-and-answer session, Musk touched on several topics. He said xAI will open source its models about nine months after release. When asked what he recommends to young people in AI, he went into pitch mode and said they need to work at xAI, similar to Musk’s 18-year-old son, who just began at the corporate. When he traveled to Mars along with his other company, SpaceX, he reiterated that the schedule could be “2028 in the best case, 2030 in the realistic case,” one participant recalled. When asked a few succession plan if he retires, he said he’s more focused on constructing artificial general intelligence.
The company also had arrange a station where attendees could reveal an unreleased imaging model that xAI had developed itself, attendees said. At one point, it showed an AI-generated image of a person in a strawberry costume, in response to photos viewed by Forbes.
The event had a celebration atmosphere with a nerdy twist. The first floor of the office was darkly lit like a club, attendees said, with an open bar, hord’oeuvres and a DJ playing music is coded in real time. Chess boards were arrange and a few participants challenged one another to games. Security was tight. Attendees passed through metal detectors and had their bags checked before entering, while multiple security guards roamed the constructing.
Still, attendees were surprised at how close they were capable of get to Musk, who is alleged to be the richest person on this planet Forbes 400 list was released earlier this week. “I was about three feet away from him,” said Andrew Gao, a Stanford student known on X for his posts about AI Forbes. “I couldn’t have touched him, but we could have high fived.”
The day after the event, von Hagen posted on X in regards to the differences between OpenAI’s Dev Day and xAI’s Open Day. He said the OpenAI meeting felt more like an Apple event, while the xAI meeting was less sophisticated.
musk replied to his post: “OpenAI certainly didn’t get off to a great start.”
