Despite advocating for an industry-wide halt to AI training, Elon Musk has reportedly kicked off a major artificial intelligence project within Twitter. The company has already purchased approximately 10,000 GPUs and recruited AI talent from DeepMind for the project that involves a large language model (LLM), reports Business Insider.
One source familiar with the matter stated that Musk’s AI project is still in its initial phase. However, acquiring a significant amount of additional computational power suggests his dedication towards advancing the project, as per another individual. Meanwhile, the exact purpose of the generative AI is unclear, but potential applications include improving search functionality or generating targeted advertising content.
At this point, it is unknown what exact hardware was procured by Twitter. However, Twitter has reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars on these compute GPUs despite Twitter’s ongoing financial problems, which Musk describes as an ‘unstable financial situation.’ These GPUs are expected to be deployed in one of Twitter’s two remaining data centers, with Atlanta being the most likely destination. Interestingly, Musk closed Twitter’s primary datacenter in Sacramento in late December, which obviously lowered the company’s compute capabilities.
In addition to buying GPU hardware for its generative AI project, Twitter is hiring additional engineers. Earlier this year, the company recruited Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss, engineers from AI research DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet. Musk has been actively seeking talent in the AI industry to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT since at least February.
