Musk, who warned about 'threats' of AI, seeks to raise $1 billion for his chatbot

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has time and again warned about the potential dangers of AI technology and how it threatens humanity, is now seeking to raise a billion dollars for his artificial intelligence startup,xAI, with which he is hoping to compete with Open AI's ChatGPT.

In the US Securities and Exchange Commission's official filing on Tuesday, it was revealed that Musk's company had gathered $134.7 million earlier this year and plans to raise around $1 billion overall.

It added that there was a firm agreement for increasing the full funds required to meet the target, which indicated that Musk may have finalised some major deals, amounting to billions.

Last month, Musk offered a preview of his company's chatbot called "Grok", which is similar to ChatGPT and which he stated has been trained on the basis of data collected from X, which was bought by Musk a year ago for $44 billion.

The founder of Tesla and one of the most famous wealthy entrepreneurs started xAI in July and engaged researchers from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, the University of Toronto and Tesla.

Musk said that the company was missioned to "understand the true nature of the universe".

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Musk says AI can destroy human colony on Mars

The rampant steps which are being taken by Musk to grow his AI startup come in the wake of his continuous warning against the dangers of AI.

In a conversation with DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, Musk had said he was hoping that humans could colonise Mars and avoid the threats posed by Earth. However, he had said that the plan may not work if AI was involved.

Watch:Elon Musk hits back at advertisers who left X

At that time, Hassabis had said that AI, if accompanied by humans, could actually result in the destruction of the colony. Later, Musk invested in Hassabis' AI company so that he could learn about the new technology before launching his own start-up.

In recent weeks, the chatbot was asked by a user to roast the billionaire with one word. The user was left amused when Musk was described by the AI bot as “overrated”.

The screenshot of the conversation was shared on X and caught the attention of Musk who replied to the post saying that Grok is "accurate".

(With inputs from agencies)