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‘Very wonderful, very toxic’: How AI became the culture war’s new frontier

By Nick Robins-Early

21 Aug 2023 · 5 min read

informed Summary

  1. Elon Musk, who has criticized AI models for being “too woke,” recently launched his own AI company, xAI, which he claims will be “maximally true”. Musk has warned about the dangers of training AI to be politically correct.

When Elon Musk introduced the team behind his new artificial intelligence company xAI last month, the billionaire entrepreneur took a question from the rightwing media activist Alex Lorusso. ChatGPT had begun “editorializing the truth” by giving “weird answers like that there are more than two genders”, Lorusso posited. Was that a driver behind Musk’s decision to launch xAI, he wondered.

“I do think there is significant danger in training AI to be politically correct, or in other words training AI to not say what it actually thinks is true,” Musk replied. His own company’s AI on the other hand, would be “maximally true” he had said earlier in the presentation.

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