Elon Musk announced that SpaceX plans to train its Grok AI model using company data, including contributions from its employees. Musk suggested this approach could instill desirable values in future AI models, likening employees to 'parents' of the AI.
This development highlights the growing trend of AI companies leveraging proprietary employee data for model training, raising ethical and privacy concerns among staff, and signals SpaceX's aggressive push into the AI sector.
SpaceX intends to train its artificial intelligence model, Grok, using the company's internal data, including contributions from its employees. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, announced this plan during a company all-hands meeting, suggesting that employees would effectively become 'parents' to the AI, shaping its values and beliefs.
Musk expressed his long-standing concerns about the risks of superintelligent AI misaligned with human goals. He believes that training Grok on data from SpaceX employees, whom he described as "a collection of some of the very best humans on Earth," could instill desirable values into future AI models. "You will effectively be the parents of the AI. It will inherit your thoughts and ideas and beliefs, and I think that's a good thing," Musk told staff.
The exact nature of the employee data to be used and the method of its collection have not been detailed, and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This move comes as AI companies are increasingly turning to employee and other internal data sources to train their models, having largely exhausted readily available internet data. Meta previously faced significant backlash from its staff over a similar initiative to collect keystroke and mouse movement data, which was subsequently paused.
SpaceX, which absorbed Musk's AI startup xAI, is actively competing in the AI race. The company recently launched Grok Bot, an AI agent designed to perform tasks autonomously on computers, such as drafting emails and writing code. This follows SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of the AI coding startup Cursor, which is expected to close soon. Musk encouraged SpaceX employees to utilize and improve the company's AI, envisioning that SpaceX's dominance in AI would lead to significant profits and advancements for civilization, even teasing future moon holidays for employees.