New 'OpenAI' Artificial Intelligence Group Formed By Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, And More

In the last few years, the world of artificial intelligence has mainly been dominated by large internet companies with huge computing infrastructures like Google and Facebook, or research universities like MIT or Stanford. The non-profit research firm is backed by heavy hitters like co-chairs Elon Musk (of SpaceX and Tesla fame), Y Combinator's Sam Altman, as well as investor Peter Thiel (who worked with Musk at PayPal). They claim to have garnered a billion dollars in private funding, from people like Thiel and Amazon Web Services. "We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as is possible safely," OpenAI writes in its first blog post, published just a few moments ago. The goal? Make the scope of A.I less narrow.