Elon Musk buys thousands of GPUs for Twitter A.I. project: report
Sources said the GPUs could go toward improving search functionality or users’ advertising experience
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Despite his purported reservations against artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has reportedly purchased thousands of graphics processing units, or GPUs, for a Twitter AI project.
Tech companies often use GPUs to handle the computational workload required for large AI models.
New Nvidia 1070 GTX Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), aka graphics card, close-up of cooling fan. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images / Getty Images)
People familiar with the company told Business Insider that Musk’s AI project involves a large language model, or LLM, which are training on vast amounts of text data to learn patterns.
It’s unclear what the ultimate objective is, but the sources suggested it could be geared toward improving search functionality or improving users’ advertising experience.
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The new units will likely operate from one of Twitter’s two remaining data centers in either Atlanta or Portland, Oregon. Musk abruptly closed Twitter’s third data center in Sacramento, California, on Christmas Eve to cut costs.
The reported project is peculiar given Musk’s reservations about AI.
Late last month, he, along with a group of prominent computer scientists and other tech notables like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter warning that AI systems with "human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity."
Elon Musk Twitter account seen on Mobile with Elon Musk in the background on screen, seen in this photo illustration. (Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The letter read in part: "Recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control."
Still, Musk has moved forward with bolstering Twitter’s AI infrastructure. Last month, he began assembling a team of AI gurus to build a non-woke alternative to ChatGPT, the much-hyped bot developed by OpenAI.
Sources familiar with the matter told The Information that Musk, who has criticized OpenAI for "training AI to be woke" with politically-correct messaging, has been actively recruiting experts for the project – including Igor Babuschkin, who recently left Alphabet’s DeepMind AI division.
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A representative for Twitter did not respond to FOX Business request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.