Top IT executives pour $1 billion into artificial intelligence startup The Japan Times

SAN FRANCISCO – Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and other prominent tech executives are pouring $1 billion into a nonprofit aimed at creating artificial intelligence that augments humans' capabilities, rather than making them obsolete. The effort announced Friday, called OpenAI, joins significant investments from companies such as Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which have used artificial intelligence to sharpen their businesses with services such as facial recognition or language processing. But the OpenAI founders suggested they have set their sights on bigger problems. "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return," a blog post on Open-AI's website (bit.ly/1lBMdz9) said.