Billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday warned a Saudi investor forum about the dangers of artificial intelligence models he said were “woke” and “nihilistic” rather than “maximally truth-seeking”.

Appearing remotely at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, sometimes referred to as “Davos in the Desert”, the 53-year-old chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX also plugged Republican candidate Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House.

De facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to position Saudi Arabia as a global leader on AI, and the subject dominated several panels on Tuesday.

Musk said he was optimistic about the technology but warned about the politics he said was being baked into models developed in the United States.

“It tends to be trained to be politically correct, and for a lot of AIs that are being trained in the San Francisco Bay Area, they have taken on the philosophy of the people around them, which kind of makes sense,” he said.

“You have a woke, nihilistic philosophy that has been built into these AIs and they are being taught to say crazy things in some cases that are very troubling.”

In one case, he said, an AI model concluded that misgendering reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner was more dangerous than nuclear war.

Musk, who also owns X, has thrown his millions, time and considerable influence into backing Trump since endorsing him in July.

He has also appeared on stage with Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and hosted a series of town halls on his own in the battleground state, seen as critical in the November election.

Musk, who previously supported Barack Obama but has become increasingly conservative in recent years, peppers his 202 million followers on X with messages championing Trump and denigrating his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I’ve been playing a significant role in this election,” he said on Tuesday, before offering one reason why he preferred Trump to Harris.

“I feel more optimistic with a Trump White House than a non-Trump White House,” he said.

“The biggest impediment to progress that we’re experiencing is over-regulation… It takes longer to get a permit to launch than to build a giant rocket.”

rcb/dv