Elon Musk's nonprofit can help AI systems get smarter -- even if their developers have bad intentions

OpenAI, the nonprofit backed by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to promote artificial intelligence that helps rather than harms humanity, opened a new virtual training center on Monday. It's called Universe, and anyone building artificial intelligence programs can use it. With Universe, developers can train artificial intelligence applications with games, websites, web browsers and other apps. The idea here is that the more an AI system practices using interfaces designed for human users, the more human-like AI can become. But since Universe is open for anyone to use, that leaves the door open to developers who may utilize Universe to train AI in a way that would beget harm -- precisely what Musk's nonprofit aims to prevent.