The move comes as a surprise, considering that Musk was recently at the forefront of another movement that raised concerns about the development of AI.
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk has reportedly made some new buys in line with Twitter’s artificial intelligence (AI) project. According to a Business Insider report, Musk is forging ahead with his plans to create an AI infrastructure for Twitter and has bought almost 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to this effect. Interestingly, however, the move comes as a surprise, considering that Musk was recently at the forefront of another movement that raised concerns about the development of AI in general.
Despite this, sources with insider knowledge of the company have confirmed the purchase. But they also believe that there appears to be some sort of urgency to the project. While they admit that it is yet in its infancy, large buys such as this often signal that Musk is fully ‘committed’ to the project, the sources said.
Is Elon Musk Having an AI Dilemma?
Recall that on March 18, Musk revealed his plans to use AI to fish out manipulation acts on Twitter. The tweet read partly:
“In the months ahead, we will use AI to detect & highlight manipulation of public opinion on this platform.”
However, Musk has since then signed off on an open letter calling for AI to be halted for the time being. At the time, he, alongside thousands of other tech researchers shared the opinion that AI technology poses risks to humanity.
Elon Musk is also on record for calling on regulators to act swiftly before it’s too late to keep AI research in check. This was at a 2017 event that he attended with the United States National Governors Association.
Despite Musk’s reservations about the technology, Twitter, under his oversight has continued to hire experts in the AI field. For example, former DeepMind engineers Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss jumped ship to join Musk’s team in March. And it might be worth noting that DeepMind is the AI research arm of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
From all indications, Musk may be more interested in AI than not. And with 10,000 more GPUs to be used on the platform, he may have dealt with any potential computation power issues that large-scale AI models require.
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