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SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk has had a busy week.
Days before his SpaceX spacecraft exploded after launch and he removed blue ticks from Twitter users’ profiles, he appeared in a pre-taped interview on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight. As if he wasn’t busy enough with SpaceX, Twitter and Tesla — which disappointed investors with its results this week and sent the stock down around 10 percent on Thursday — Musk spoke about his plans for TruthGPT, an AI product he plans to use it to compete with Microsoft and Google.
The crowded lineup demonstrates both the reach of Musk’s empire — which already included five companies in which he takes an active role — and the challenges he faces in order to keep up. Musk is caught between a cycle of daily firefighting on Twitter, where he admitted last week to having slept on a seventh-story couch, and balancing responsibilities at Tesla and SpaceX that literally amount to moonshots.
It’s all the more surprising that Musk is launching a new company, X.AI, which he founded in Nevada last month. Although little is known about the endeavor so far, he has acknowledged that he has amassed powerful computing gear to pursue generative AI, the field behind chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Musk’s recruitment interview for his new venture could prove difficult as some of his other companies’ employees are pissed at the prospect of staying on long-term, wary of the top-down management structure and worn down by the experience, according to those familiar with the company People matter, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
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Musk finds himself in an unfamiliar position chasing the latest tech bet: his business reputation has been badly damaged and there are doubts as to whether he will succeed.
“His political capital, I think, has dwindled,” said Gene Munster, managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management. Musk will likely have a harder time recruiting, Munster said.
But “he’s still the only Musk,” Munster added.
Musk, Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Normally brash and careless with his promises, Musk appeared to be hedging his bets on his AI activities in the Fox News interview, explaining why he’s entering a field where Google and Microsoft already have an edge.
“I think I’ll create a third option, although of course I’ll start very late in the game,” Musk said. “It’s definitely a late start. But I will try to create a third option, and hopefully that third option will do more good than harm.”
Musk has long been recognized as brilliant, a once-in-a-generation entrepreneur responsible for some of the most innovative companies of his time. He founded the company that became PayPal, then invested in Tesla and helped it become the dominant automaker in the electric vehicle space.
Musk founded SpaceX, which revived the US space program and launched manned missions to deliver astronauts safely to the International Space Station. And he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, pledging to democratize the site and make it a space for free speech. He also founded the Boring Co., a tunneling company aimed at solving traffic, and Neuralink, which attempts to fuse computers with the human brain, although both have had limited impact so far.
But since he has stretched so thin, cracks have appeared. Tesla stock — while recovering somewhat this year — is trading at about half its price early last year, before it was revealed that Musk was following Twitter. Though hailed as a success by many, SpaceX’s unmanned launch on Thursday fell short of some expectations.
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And Musk himself has admitted that Twitter is worth less than half what he paid for it.
There are growing doubts as to whether Musk can really do it As he runs his current businesses, fears are growing about joining his teams — known for burnout, constant attrition and workers on the fringes, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those who work at Musk’s company have usually understood the deal: sacrificing work-life balance in order to fulfill their ambitions of contributing to world-changing products. But there have been a number of high-profile departures from Tesla, thanks in part to burnout, some people said. At Twitter, where only around 20 percent of the workforce is left, many want out.
A former Twitter employee who recently left said many realize they are just following orders and have little chance of creating anything new.
Delivery pressure has been intense at Tesla, said former employee John Bernal, who was fired after posting videos on YouTube demonstrating the automaker’s “fully self-driving” beta, the driver-assistance system used in cities and residential streets .
“Elon just says things without really understanding the actual timeline internally,” Bernal said. “And then we suddenly panicked.”
AI chatbots are part of the hottest technology sector right now, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard all vying for market share after being released to the public.
Microsoft has invested billions in OpenAI to collaborate on the technology, while Google relies on its years of AI expertise to advance it.
Musk was an early donor to OpenAI, which used to be a non-profit organization. He was also a member of the board before leaving in 2018. In his interview with Fox, he explained how the AI project he helped launch escaped his grasp.
“I’ve really put a lot of effort into building this organization to serve as a counterweight to Google,” Musk said. “And then I kind of lost track of the ball, I guess, and they’re closed source now and they’re obviously for-profit.”
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Musk has criticized OpenAI and the direction it has taken under CEO Sam Altman, and condemned the limitations it has placed on AI, which Musk sees as a violation of the truth. Musk also signed a letter last month calling for a pause in AI development, along with other business leaders and academics.
Musk’s new company aims to serve as a counterweight to these forces, although it’s unclear what business model it would operate under.
“I’m going to launch something I’m calling TruthGPT,” Musk said during the interview, “or a maximum truth-seeking AI trying to understand the nature of the universe.”
Musk’s companies are also experimenting with AI – particularly with his “Full Self-Driving” software, the Tesla driver assistance system hopes to make its cars autonomous. Musk promised in 2019 that Tesla vehicles would one day wake up and become autonomous, ushering in an era of one million robotic taxis — a promise that has yet to be fulfilled.
And its purchase of Twitter could prove useful in training the AI, which relies on a wealth of information on the web to create models that mimic human speech and writing.
When news of Musk’s AI bet broke, some wondered where it likely ranked behind Tesla and SpaceX, but prioritized ahead of smaller firms like Boring Co. and Neuralink.
A company like X.AI, Munster said, could leverage or build on the various areas of expertise Musk is amassing in other parts of his empire, such as with Tesla’s planned humanoid robot Optimus.
“He’s in a good spot with what’s going on in the AI,” he said.