Elon Musk just announced a new artificial intelligence research company

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the formation of a new non-profit artificial intelligence research company via Twitter Friday.

Called OpenAI, the research group aims to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole,"OpenAI wrote in a post introducing the company. A lack of financial obligation will allow the company to focus more on this mission, the post adds.

The company is co-chaired by Musk and Y Combinator's Sam Altman. Ilya Sutskever, a research scientists at Google who specializes in machine learning, will serve as research director.

Researchers part of OpenAI will be encouraged to publish their work, and any patents the company receives will be shared with the world. 

"We'll freely collaborate with others across many institutions and expect to work with companies to research and deploy new technologies," the post adds.

A group of backers have committed $1 billion to the project, though OpenAI only plans to spend a "tiny fraction" in the next couple of years.

The backers include Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn; Jessica Livingston, a founding partner of Y Combinator during its seed stage; Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal; Amazon Web Services; Infosys; and YC Research.

 Greg Brockman, CTO of Stripe, Musk, and Altman also contributed funding.

"Because of AI's surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach," the OpenAI post reads. "When it does, it'll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest."

Musk has funded a number of research projects to ensure artificial intelligence does not turn evil.

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