Elon Musk Just Slammed AI Tech, But His Secret Twitter Project Tells Another Story

Artificial intelligence has had a large number of critics since it was even a concept, not the least of which is social media user and owner Elon Musk. As recently as last month, Musk signed an open letter that critiques AI technology as it currently stands, and to halt all further training and advancement on AI technology in an effort to stop it from becoming dangerous in the future.

After signing that, you'd think the Elon wouldn't have too many AI-related projects going on, but you'd be wrong. According to Business Insider, Musk is starting work on a huge AI project for Twitter, and he has the graphics processing units (GPUs) to prove it — as many as 10,000. GPUs, in addition to running gaming and video editing software, can help computers crunch numbers and sort through data on a large scale, perfect for running the Large Language Model relied on by programs like ChatGPT.

Elon has already gone as far as hiring two people, Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss, who have worked with DeepMind; an AI-focused subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Spending huge amounts of money on several thousands of GPUs and hiring new staff hardly sounds like a call against the further development of artificial intelligence technology — especially from Musk, who is more famous for firing Twitter staff than bringing more people on. As to what the new AI project will entail for Musk or Twitter has yet to be seen.

Elon has joked in the past about robot overlords and has been publicly critical of AI, but that isn't fooling anyone. Tesla's website still boasts of the company's expanding work in robotics with the Tesla Bot, and it constantly espouses the virtues of its Full Self-Driving software as well. Combine that with the recent purchases and hires by Twitter, and Musk seemingly isn't as anti-AI as he would have people believe.