That’s not a great source for truth. IIRC, the “founding” myths for both companies got a rewrite a little after Musk joined. The entry in Tesla is very clear that he was an investor and not founder. But the entry in SpaceX is a little fuzzier.
> Arguably the kind of AI Twitter needs doesn't pose an existential risk. He's trying to make Twitter profitable so that's obviously a waste of money.
Arguably it does. Shaping the public forum of a society can have profound impacts. You could argue that getting Twitter out of the red is more important at this stage (and that’s not a bad argument), but don’t discount the problems an AI at Twitter could cause.
How does Wikipedia disagree?
Originally "Tesla" the brand, was started by Martin and Marc, but all they had was a brand and a vision but no physical product nor prototype.
At around the same time, Elon wanted to build an electric car based off the tzero by AC Propulsion. He was introduced to Martin and Marc who had a similar vision, and basically Elon invested money into Tesla Motors.
It wasn't until Elon put in money, that the first prototype was built (the tesla roadster). Arguably, if Elon didn't join the team and bring on Straubel, Tesla wouldn't be what it is today. Likely wouldn't even have a launched consumer product. Even Elon was the one that managed to get the trademark "Tesla Motors" which wasn't even owned by Martin or Marc originally.
Lengthy source: https://youtu.be/AeeeEDSekG8?t=900
Granted it's out of Elon's mouth but there's tons of other sources that corroborates with that story.
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MikKu6Juhok
source: https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/the-short-...
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqPsdlQDOYQ
source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/27/with-jb-straubel-departure-t...
More concretely: Helping the teams who actually build and maintain these models ensure that the behavior isn't biased, that the model isn't being exploited by adversarial data, that the decisions made by the model are explainable, that the decisions are fair, coming up with corporate-standard-definitions for those various mutable terms (like fair), etc.
The usual things handled by a team that is tasked with AI Assurance/Ethics.
Now for my opinion: When it comes to impugning Elon Musk's character, he's done enough of that himself. He doesn't need my help. Additionally, firing an AI Ethics team in a company which requires AI(ML) to even operate speaks for itself.
Sure, but this is just a feature of the product in question, so if you have some metrics to measure such outcomes then the product developers themselves can do this checking as part of their development process. I'm not sure why this would need to be a separate division. Presumably Tesla's autonomous driving developers are also creating metrics to ensure they don't run over dogs and children, they don't need a separate ethics division to tell them this is important.
Even if true (Wikipedia disagrees), it's a distinction without a difference. Arguably, neither SpaceX nor Tesla would be where they are now without him.
> And IMHO, if he was really concerned about the existential risk for AI, perhaps he shouldn't have let the Ethical AI research team go from Twitter.
Arguably the kind of AI Twitter needs doesn't pose an existential risk. He's trying to make Twitter profitable so that's obviously a waste of money.