LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman takes another dig at Elon Musk for proposing a pause on AI development

• Reid Hoffman took a dig at Elon Musk over his stance on AI in a Milken Institute talk this week.
• Musk has signed a letter backing an AI development pause, but also wants to make a ChatGPT rival.

Elon Musk has some incongruous views on AI development, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman pointed that out in a recent talk.

In a discussion at the Milken Institute's Global Conference 2023 on Tuesday, Hoffman expressed his disagreement with an open letter — which was signed by Musk and thousands of others. It called for a six-month pause on developing AI systems stronger than GPT-4 until "we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."

But Hoffman pointed out Musk's seemingly conflicting views: "And Elon — while signing that letter — is trying to hire a whole team and stand up an AI effort," Hoffman noted.

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Musk told Fox News last month that he wanted to build a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe," which he called "TruthGPT," in an apparent riff on OpenAI's ChatGPT. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015 alongside CEO Sam Altman and others but stepped down from its board in 2018.

Insider's Kali Hays reported last month that Musk is moving forward with an artificial intelligence project at Twitter. The Financial Times also recently reported that Musk was fielding interest from Tesla and SpaceX investors for a planned AI startup.

Hoffman has addressed the open letter before. On CNBC's "Squawk Box" last month, Hoffman said he disliked the idea of pressing pause on AI and criticized Musk over his stance on AI development.

"I think some of it's a little bit less well-intentioned, like 'Everyone else slow down, so I can speed up,'' Hoffman said. "It's overall, I think, broadly a mistaken effort because actually I think everything we've seen so far in terms of development is the best ways to get safety is through larger scale models — they actually train to align better with human interests, and so the call to slow down is actually, in fact, less safe."

Hoffman continued: "Elon tends to have a 'I must build it with my own hands.' You look at what amazing stuff he's done with SpaceX and Tesla, and it has the kind of 'It's only great if I do it'" approach.

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.