Elon Musk has been described as the real-life inspiration behind the superhero character of Tony Stark from the Ironman movie franchise. He is the CEO and founder of SpaceX, and co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal, among other things.

He has been an outspoken critic of the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence, describing it as humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” He has invested heavily in the AI firms Deepmind and Vicarious in order to “keep an eye on them,” and has donated $10 million dollars to the Future of Life Institute, an organization whose mission statement is, “To catalyze and support research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future, including positive ways for humanity to steer its own course considering new technologies and challenges.”

Now he has joined with leading researchers to found OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company with the purpose of keeping AI open-source so that as the science develops it will benefit everyone and will not become the private property of corporations or governments. This two-minute video explains more:

 

 

Thumbnail image of Elon Musk courtesy of NVIDIA Corporation via flickr