Elon Musk on Sunday unveiled the raw computer code behind his version of an artificially intelligent chatbot. It's an escalation by one of the world's richest men in the fight to control the future of AI.
Grok is a product of xAI, a company Musk founded last year and is designed to deliver sarcastic responses in the style of the science fiction novel “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” Although xAI is a separate entity from X, its technology is integrated into social media platforms and trained based on user posts. Users who subscribe to X's premium features can ask Grok questions and receive answers.
By making the code publicly available for anyone to see and use, known as open source, Musk has raised questions about whether doing so will help make the technology more secure, or whether it will simply open it up to abuse. A further dive into the industry's heated debate.
Musk, who calls himself an advocate of open sourcing, did something similar last year with Company X's recommendation algorithm, but he hasn't updated it since.
“We still have work to do, but this platform is already the most transparent and truth-seeking (the bar is not too high),” Musk said. Posted on Sunday in response to comments about the open-sourced X recommendation algorithm.
The move to open source chatbot code is the latest clash between Musk and ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which the mercurial billionaire recently sued for breaking similar promises. Ta. Musk, who was the founder and helped fund OpenAI until he left the company several years later, said such important technology would be controlled solely by tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which is a close partner of OpenAI. He argued that it shouldn't be done.
OpenAI said it would seek to have the lawsuit dismissed.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
Controversy over the open sourcing of generative AI, which can create realistic images and videos and reproduce human-like text responses, has roiled the tech industry over the past year as the technology has exploded in popularity. Ta. Opinions in Silicon Valley are sharply divided over whether the coding underlying AI should be made available to the public, with some engineers saying the powerful technology needs to be protected from intruders, while others argue the benefits of transparency. Some engineers argue that the harm outweighs the harm.
By releasing his AI code, Musk has firmly entrenched himself in the latter camp. This could allow Musk to leapfrog competitors who have a head start in technology development.
Once the code is published, it can be modified and reused by other companies and independent software developers to build their own chatbots and other AI systems. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is also open sourcing its AI technology, called LLaMA. Google and Mistral, a prominent French startup, are also open sourcing.
Musk, owner of X and SpaceX and CEO of Tesla Inc., founded xAI last year and said its mission was to “understand reality.” In November, he said investors in the $44 billion take-private deal for Company X 25% stake With xAI.
Musk said no topic should be off-limits to chatbots and criticized companies that steer the technology to avoid controversy as “woke.”
“When an AI is programmed to promote diversity at all costs, like Google Gemini, it will do whatever it takes to bring about that outcome, even killing you.” Deaf,” Musk said. Friday post.
But at least some of the attitudes surrounding open source are closely tied to business interests. Since OpenAI is the market leader and offers the most powerful and probably the most popular chatbot, there is little reason to open source the code.
Meanwhile, Musk and xAI are trying to catch up, and open sourcing the code and inviting others to improve the technology could help level the playing field.
Subbarao Kambanpati, a computer science professor at Arizona State University, argued that open sourcing AI technology today is the safest approach. But companies like xAI and Meta don't necessarily open source their technology for that reason, he added.
“Elon Musk and Yann LeCun are not the best messengers for this discussion,” he said, referring to Meta's lead AI scientist.
