Elon Musk says he's planning to create a 'maximum truth-seeking AI' that he likes to call 'TruthGPT'

• Elon Musk says he wants to create something he calls "TruthGPT," an apparent riff on ChatGPT.
• He told Fox News' Tucker Carlson it'd be a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe."

Elon Musk has confirmed reports that he's planning to create an AI startup to build a rival to ChatGPT.

Musk announced his plans in his forthcoming interview on Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Fox published some excerpts of the interview Monday morning.

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

The Tesla and Twitter CEO said elsewhere in the interview that he believed AI had the potential, "however small," of "civilization destruction."

Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015 alongside CEO Sam Altman and others but left the company's board in 2018. The stated reason at the time was to avoid a potential conflict of interest with Tesla, but Musk later said another reason was that he "didn't agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do."

Since stepping down from OpenAI's board, Musk has repeatedly criticized the company. In February, he said it's "not what I intended at all," calling it a "closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft."

Altman has said Musk is "obviously attacking" OpenAI on Twitter but that he remains one of Altman's heroes, saying, "I believe he is, understandably so, really stressed about AGI safety."

Semafor reported in March that Musk had tried to take over as CEO of the company in 2018, walking away after Altman and others rejected the idea, and that he was furious about ChatGPT's recent massive popularity. The chatbot amassed 100 million monthly active users in just its first two months.

Last month, Musk was one of more than 1,000 people to sign an open letter calling for a pause on advanced AI development.