Meta and Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, are both vying for a strategic partnership with Character.ai, an emerging player in the chatbot industry known for its innovative conversational agents. This competition highlights the escalating race in the AI sector to secure influential collaborations that could redefine user interactions with AI technologies.

Background on Character.ai

Character.ai, co-founded by ex-Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, has gained considerable attention for its advanced conversational AI that allows users to interact with digital versions of various personalities, both real and fictional. The platform aims to deliver engaging and plausible dialogues, setting it apart from traditional AI models focused on factual accuracy.

For decades, philosopher Nick Bostrom (director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford) has led the conversation around technology and human experience (and grabbed the attention of the tech titans who are developing AI – Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman).

Now, a decade after his NY Times bestseller S uperintelligence warned us of what could go wrong with AI development, he flips the script in his new book Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World (March 27), asking us to instead consider “What could go well?”

Ronan recently spoke to Professor Nick Bostrom.