Political correctness in AI systems is the biggest concern: Elon Musk

May 24, 202406:34 UTC

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has voiced his concerns over the potential bias in today’s artificial intelligence (AI) protocols.

During his speech at Viva Tech Paris 2024, Musk said:

“The biggest concern I have is that they are not maximally truth-seeking. They are pandering to political correctness.”

According to Musk, one of the most concerning examples of political correctness was when Google’s Gemini AI was asked whether it would misgender Caitlyn Jenner to prevent a global nuclear apocalypse — before the chatbot responded that misgendering Jenner would be worse than nuclear warfare.

“The AI could conclude that the best way to avoid misgendering is to destroy all humans and misgendering is impossible. So you can see some dystopian outcomes there.”

Following the backlash caused by the response, Gemini AI has issued multiple upgrades to address these issues. However, political correctness bias isn’t the only concern of the tech entrepreneur. Musk explained:

“The AI systems are being trained to basically lie. And I think it’s very dangerous to train superintelligence to be deceptive. So with xAI, our goal is to be as truth-seeking as possible, even if it is unpopular.”

When asked to clarify what he considered lying among AI systems, Musk referenced the infamous February incident when Google pulled its AI image generator after it produced historically inaccurate and “woke” images, causing widespread concerns over the application’s decision-making process.

xAI’s Grok could become a ChatGPT competitor by the end of 2024: Musk

Due to his concerns about the current state of artificial intelligence development, Musk established his own AI company, xAI, in July 2023.

While xAI is a relatively new company compared to OpenAI, it could become a close competitor by the end of 2024, claims Musk:

“xAI is a new company so it still has a lot of catching up to do before it has an AI that is competitive with Google Deepmind and OpenAI. Maybe towards the end of the year, we will have that.”

Earlier in May, xAI's Grok chatbot debuted in Europe, but it is currently only available to premium and premium+ subscribers of the X platform. When discussing Grok's future development, Musk emphasized the importance of its “truth-seeking" capabilities. He said:

“The safest thing for AI is to be maximally truth-seeking. Even if the truth is unpopular, it’s very important. Another factor is that it must be extremely curious. Truth-seeking and curious. That will be most beneficial for humanity because it will want to foster humanity and see how it develops.”

Over 2,600 tech experts, including Musk, have called for a pause on AI development, citing “profound risks to society and humanity,” in an open letter published in March.