Elon Musk is starting a new AI company that aims to ‘understand reality’

With Twitter in ruins, the SpaceX fleet grounded, and Tesla facing renewed scrutiny over the dangers of its Autopilot software, Elon Musk has now set his sights on his next big venture: an AI company whose stated goal is nothing less than to “understand reality.”

This does appear to be a serious enterprise. The team at xAI, as the company is known, is made up of veterans of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, and the University of Toronto. It’s headed up by Musk, of course, and is being advised by Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, the group that in May asked someone to please do something about AI before we’re all totally hosed. 

The xAI website says the new company is separate from X Corp, the company Musk established earlier this year as a successor to Twitter, “but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission.”