Monday, December 14, 2015

Elon Musk Backs Billion Dollar Artificial Intelligence Effort

Elon Musk, the billionaire technology mogul behind SpaceX, has put some money behind--surprisingly--an effort to help developer artificial intelligence research. Musk--who has voiced his concerns over artificial intelligence taking over the world and threatening humankind--is one of the backers of a new, nonprofit research company called OpenAI. OpenAI says its goal is to advance digital intelligence in a way that "is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." OpenAI says it is backed by a commitment of $1 billion in funding, from Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Jessiva Livingston, Peter Theil, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research. Altman and Musk are co-chairs of the new group.