With more and more chatbots in development, users can turn to whichever aligns with their political views, reinforcing society’s long-standing “echo chamber” dilemma.
On Monday, tech tycoon Elon Musk threw his hat in the ring in the chatbot race. In an interview with Fox News, Musk described his Chatbot as a safer alternative to existing bots like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing Chat, which, according to Musk, have the potential to annihilate humankind. “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 explained before adding that his Chatbot won’t be concerned with “wokeness” — a bias he claims existing chatbots foster.
TruthGPT comes at a time when AI’s potential ramifications are under scrutiny. Over the past month, a slew of images have gone viral after sources failed to disclose that they were AI-generated, and a photographer gave up an award after admitting that the image she claimed to have taken was created using AI. Meanwhile, fears surrounding Chatbots’ ability to replace artists and white-collar workers have been raised by many publications, as AI has been used to generate articles, songs, and college essays. Concern over inherent chatbot bias has also been flagged, with OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman admitting that ChatGPT has “shortcomings around bias.”
But although fears surrounding AI’s rapid advancement are far from unfounded, Musk’s sentiment that they have the power to undo humankind (Musk warned that AI could be “more dangerous” than poorly designed cars or planes) has been widely contested. TruthGPT’s parent company is a firm called X.AI Corp, which was established by Musk on March 9th in Nevada, according to a state filing.
But Musk’s relationship with OpenAI (Chat GPT’s parent company) goes beyond designing their latest competitor. The billionaire co-founded and served as an early donor to the enterprise before stepping down in 2018 to focus on Tesla and SpaceX. Later, he joined a group of artificial intelligence experts in calling for a six-month hiatus in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s latest iteration GPT-4, citing a risk to society.
Musk’s “truth-centric” Chatbot comes hot off the heels of his claim that ChatGPT fosters a “liberal bias.” “I am worried about the fact that it’s being trained to be politically correct, which is simply another way of being untruthful… So yes, I’m going to start something,” he told Tucker Carlson. Musk, who has claimed to be neither traditionally left nor right-wing, has disseminated a markedly anti “woke” rhetoric over the years. He took to Twitter, which he bought in 2022, to coin the phrase “woke mind virus,” claiming that wokeness was “pushing civilization toward suicide.” A proponent of free speech, Musk reinstated the Twitter accounts of various controversial figures, from Donald Trump to Andrew Tate.
Stirring up fear surrounding AI while simultaneously creating another AI tool is the kind of contradiction we’ve come to expect from the competitive magnate.
Judging by Twitter’s reaction to the announcement, Musk’s supporters and those opposing the left’s (purported) tendency towards political correctness will turn to “TruthGPT” over its competitors, suggesting that Chatbots may become akin to news outlets, varying on what end of the political spectrum they occupy, and utilized as such. But do they have the power to re-enforce our respective echo chambers, or will their wealth of information make them more subjective than human-led media platforms? Time will tell.
