Elon Musk reportedly bought thousands of GPUs for a Twitter AI project

Two former DeepMind researchers were recently employed by the company. Twitter is progressing with an internal artificial intelligence project more than a month after their hires. Elon Musk has purchased 10,000 GPUs for use at one of Twitter's two remaining data centres, according to Business Insider.

According to a source, the significant purchase of datacenter-grade GPUs by Elon Musk demonstrates his commitment to the effort, especially considering that Twitter would have no reason to spend such a large sum of money on them if they had no plans to utilise them for AI work. 

Twitter is said to be working on a project that involves creating a generative AI model, which would be trained on the company's extensive data. The specific application of this technology on Twitter's platform is unclear, although speculation suggests that it could enhance the search feature or contribute to rebuilding the advertising business.

Interestingly, Elon Musk recently signed an open letter that called for a six-month halt on the development of AI. This report might lead to questioning Musk’s position on AI, considering his involvement in the purchase of datacenter-grade GPUs by Twitter for generative AI development.

Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI, has been vocal in his criticism of the non-profit artificial intelligence research organisation. He expressed confusion around how the organisation, to which he donated around $100 million, turned into a for-profit company with a $30 billion market cap. In a recent tweet, Musk questioned the legality of this transformation and asked why everyone doesn't follow suit. His comments were aimed at OpenAI's for-profit subsidiary, OpenAI Limited Partnership.

As per a report from Semafor, it seems that Elon Musk's ongoing feud with OpenAI is of a more personal nature. In 2018, Musk allegedly expressed his concern over OpenAI's apparent fall behind internet giant Google to Sam Altman, a fellow co-founder. Musk even proposed that he should be the one to take over the reins of the lab, an idea that was not well received by Altman and the rest of OpenAI's founders.

The conflict between Musk and OpenAI ultimately led to Musk's departure from the organisation. Although both claimed it was due to a conflict of interest concerning Tesla, Semafor suggests that it was due to a power struggle within OpenAI. 

Musk had promised to continue funding OpenAI's research, but his payments stopped after he left, despite pledging roughly $1 billion to the organisation. This created a financial shortfall for OpenAI, leading to the creation of a for-profit subsidiary to secure the necessary funding. Microsoft later invested $1 billion into the firm.

However, when OpenAI's ChatGPT gained widespread attention, Musk reportedly became furious. He subsequently cut the organisation's access to Twitter's "firehose" of data, and it appears that he now wants to directly compete with his former organisation.