Elon Musk has spoken out to reveal why he quit a research organisation that designed an artificial intelligence so powerful its creators decided against unleashing it upon the world.

Last week, a non-profit called OpenAI announced it had built an AI capable of writing text so sophisticated it could convince readers it was written by a human.

It was decided that this machine mind was simply too dangerous to be released, so it’s currently safely locked up on OpenAI’s systems.

Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI and is still listed as one of its sponsors, but actually quit his position as co-chair last February.


Elon is one of the world’s most famous doom-mongers and fears the rise of the machines will end very badly for humans (Pictures: REX/Joe Rogan Experience)

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Now he’s taken to Twitter to reveal exactly why he decided to leave the organisation, saying that he didn’t agree with what it ‘wanted to do’.

The billionaire is a famed doom-monger who fears the rise of the machines poses a major existential risk to humanity.

He tweeted: ‘I had to focus on solving a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems at Tesla (especially) & SpaceX.

‘Also, Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do. Add that all up & it was just better to part ways on good terms.’

OpenAI’s GPT-2 is designed to write just like a human and is a technologically impressive leap forward capable of penning chillingly convincing text.

It was ‘trained’ by analysing eight million web pages and is capable of writing large tracts based upon a ‘prompt’ written by a real person.

But the machine mind will not be released in its fully-fledged form because of the risk of it being used for ‘malicious purposes’ such as generating fake news, impersonating people online, automating the production of spam or churning out ‘abusive or faked content to post on social media’.

OpenAI wrote: ‘Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model.

A sample of the AI's writing This prompt was written by a human: ‘In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote, previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English.’ After 10 tries, the AI wrote: ‘The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn, Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were previously unknown to science. ‘Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this odd phenomenon is finally solved. ‘Dr. Jorge Pérez, an evolutionary biologist from the University of La Paz, and several companions were exploring the Andes Mountains when they found a small valley, with no other animals or humans. Pérez noticed that the valley had what appeared to be a natural fountain, surrounded by two peaks of rock and silver snow. ‘Pérez and the others then ventured further into the valley. “By the time we reached the top of one peak, the water looked blue, with some crystals on top,” said Pérez. ‘Pérez and his friends were astonished to see the unicorn herd. These creatures could be seen from the air without having to move too much to see them – they were so close they could touch their horns. While examining these bizarre creatures the scientists discovered that the creatures also spoke some fairly regular English. Pérez stated, “We can see, for example, that they have a common ‘language,’ something like a dialect or dialectic.” ‘Dr. Pérez believes that the unicorns may have originated in Argentina, where the animals were believed to be descendants of a lost race of people who lived there before the arrival of humans in those parts of South America. ‘While their origins are still unclear, some believe that perhaps the creatures were created when a human and a unicorn met each other in a time before human civilization. According to Pérez, “In South America, such incidents seem to be quite common.” ‘However, Pérez also pointed out that it is likely that the only way of knowing for sure if unicorns are indeed the descendants of a lost alien race is through DNA. “But they seem to be able to communicate in English quite well, which I believe is a sign of evolution or at least a change in social organization,” said the scientist.’

‘As an experiment in responsible disclosure, we are instead releasing a much smaller model for researchers to experiment with, as well as a technical paper.’

The AI is obviously terrifying to journalists because it can do our job quite effectively.

it could also be used to create customer service ‘bots’ for online shopping, putting more humans out of work, as well as translating languages

The AI heralds a future where it will be impossible to distinguish between truth and misinformation online.

OpenAI added: ‘Synthetic imagery, audio, and video, imply that technologies are reducing the cost of generating fake content and waging disinformation campaigns.

Will humanity survive the invasion of AI? Elon doesn’t seem so sure (Source: AFP)

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‘The public at large will need to become more sceptical of text they find online, just as the ”deep fakes” phenomenon calls for more scepticism about images.

‘Today, malicious actors — some of which are political in nature — have already begun to target the shared online commons, using things like “robotic tools, fake accounts and dedicated teams to troll individuals with hateful commentary or smears that make them afraid to speak, or difficult to be heard or believed”.

‘We should consider how research into the generation of synthetic images, videos, audio, and text may further combine to unlock new as-yet-unanticipated capabilities for these actors, and should seek to create better technical and non-technical countermeasures.’