Musk tells Twitter users xAI will aim to solve mysteries of the universe

Elon Musk told Twitter users on Friday that he aimed to “understand the universe” with the formation of his new artificial intelligence company, xAI, joking that its mission statement could be re-formulated as: “What the hell is really going on?” 

“I guess the overarching goal of xAI is to build a good AI with the overarching purpose of just trying to understand the universe,” the billionaire stated in a discussion on Twitter Spaces, noting that he believes the safest way to build an AI is to make one that is curious and truth-seeking.

“I mean, understanding the universe is the entire purpose of physics. So, I think it’s actually really clear – there’s just so much that we don’t understand right now. Or, we think we understand, but actually, we don’t in reality. So, there’s still a lot of unresolved questions that are extremely fundamental,” the SpaceX founder remarked.

Musk pointed to questions that remain about dark matter, dark energy, the nature of gravity and the fermi paradox, which says Earth should have already received extraterrestrial visitors by now.

ELON MUSK ADDS AI TO EMPIRE OF TWITTER, TESLA, SPACEX, NEURALINK & BORING COMPANY

“If anyone would have seen evidence of aliens, it’s probably me. And yet, I have not seen even one tiny shred of evidence for aliens,” he told his xAI employees, highlighting that humans “may actually be the only thing, at least in this part of the galaxy.”

Furthermore, the Tesla co-founder noted that there is a cosmically narrow window until the sun expands, boiling the oceans. 

NASA says when the sun starts to die, it will expand into a red giant star that will possibly engulf Earth, noting that scientists predict that the sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime.

“So there are all these, like, fundamental questions. I don’t think you can call anything AGI until it’s solved at least one fundamental question,” Musk remarked, referring to artificial general intelligence. Artificial general intelligence is an advanced technology that mimics human-like abilities.

Musk said that humans have substantially solved many of those questions – a key threshold for AGI.

“So, it would be great to know what the hell is really going on, essentially,” he said.

The company will work closely with Twitter and Tesla.  It will be independent of Twitter’s new parent company, X Corp. but will work closely with it.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.