"During a live audio event on the social media platform, Musk’s team of all-male math, AI and engineering experts spoke about how they wanted to create an AI..."

"... that was smarter than humans with the goal of benefiting society. Musk said the fundamental goal of the company is to understand 'what the hell is really going on.' The event showcased how Musk seems to initially be more focused on answering deep scientific questions, rather than competing head to head with OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to create consumer AI products. Musk did say he saw his venture as an alternative to bigger AI companies but said xAI was still 'embryonic,' and that it would take time for it to catch up with OpenAI and Google...."

I'm reading "Musk’s new AI company, xAI, will aim to solve scientific mysteries The billionaire and his team of artificial intelligence researchers gave details of the company’s goals during a live Twitter event Friday" (WaPo).

If it's true that xAI is really about answering deep scientific questions — AKA understanding what the hell is going on — then this is a nice contrast to Mark Zuckerberg's Threads, which was created (it seems) to compete head to head with Twitter.

I went into the comments over there, mainly to see if they were saying what I expected them to say — essentially: We hate Musk. And, yes, there it is, right on top of the "most liked" pile of comments: "Just what we need, AI that is explicitly fascist and white supremacist."

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland writes:  

WaPo commenters are why ChatGPT does so well. Their comments seem like coherent sentences, but the words used don't create a coherent thought. What is explicitly fascist? Was Musk proposing having his AI collude with the government to control the population? That's fascism, and while it exists quite a bit these days; I don't think that is what Musk is proposing. Musk is proposing quite the opposite.

Instapundit quotes that comment in full and adds: "Nowadays anti-fascism is called 'fascism,' just as explicit racism is called 'anti-racism.'"