Elon Musk to Open Source Grok Chatbot in Latest AI War Escalation – The New York Times
Artificial Intelligence
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Mr. Musk’s move to open up the code behind Grok is the latest volley in a war to win the A.I. battle, after a suit against OpenAI on the same topic.
Kate Conger and
Reporting from San Francisco
Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world’s richest men in a battle to control the future of A.I.
Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is a product from xAI, the company Mr. Musk founded last year. While xAI is an independent entity from X, its technology has been integrated into the social media platform and is trained on users’ posts. Users who subscribe to X’s premium features can ask Grok questions and receive responses.
By opening the code up for everyone to view and use — known as open sourcing — Mr. Musk waded further into a heated debate in the A.I. world over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse.
Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed proponent of open sourcing, did the same with X’s recommendation algorithm last year, but he has not updated it since.
“Still work to do, but this platform is already by far the most transparent & truth-seeking (not a high bar tbh),” Mr. Musk posted on Sunday in response to a comment on open sourcing X’s recommendation algorithm.
The move to open-source chatbot code is the latest volley between Mr. Musk and ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, which the mercurial billionaire sued recently over breaking its promise to do the same. Mr. Musk, who was a founder and helped fund OpenAI before departing several years later, has argued such an important technology should not be controlled solely by tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which is a close partner of OpenAI.
OpenAI has said it will seek to dismiss the suit.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)
The controversy over open sourcing generative A.I. — which can create realistic images and videos and recreate humanlike text responses — has roiled the tech world over the past year after the explosion in the popularity of the technology. Silicon Valley is deeply divided over whether the coding underlying A.I. should be publicly available, with some engineers arguing that the powerful technology must be guarded against interlopers while others insist that the benefits of transparency outweigh the harms.
By publishing his A.I. code, Mr. Musk planted himself firmly in the latter camp, a decision that could enable him to leapfrog competitors who have had a head start in developing the technology.
The publication of the code will allow other companies and independent software developers to modify and reuse it as they build their own chatbots and other A.I. systems. Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, has also open sourced its A.I. technology, called LLaMA. Google and a prominent French start-up, Mistral, have also done some open sourcing.
Last year, Mr. Musk — who also owns X and SpaceX, and is chief executive officer of Tesla — formed xAI, stating its mission was to “understand reality.” In November, he said investors in his $44 billion take-private deal for X would own a 25 percent stake in xAI.
Mr. Musk has said that no topic should be off-limits for chatbots, criticizing companies that steer their technology to avoid controversy as “woke.”
“If an AI is programmed to push for diversity at all costs, as Google Gemini was, then it will do whatever it can to cause that outcome, potentially even killing people,” Mr. Musk said in a post on Friday.
But at least some of the posturing around open sourcing is closely tied to business interests. Because OpenAI is the market leader, offering the most powerful and arguably the most popular chatbot, it has little reason to open source its code.
Mr. Musk and xAI, on the other hand, are working to catch up and could help level the playing field by open sourcing their code and inviting others to improve the technology.
Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor of computer science at Arizona State University, has argued that open sourcing today’s A.I. technology is the safest approach. But he added that companies like xAI and Meta were not necessarily open-sourcing the technology for that reason.
“Elon Musk and Yann LeCun are not the best messengers for this argument,” he said, referencing Meta’s chief A.I. scientist.
Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at kate.conger@nytimes.com. More about Kate Conger
Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz
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Apple is in discussions with Google about using Google’s generative A.I. model called Gemini for its next iPhone.
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When Google released Gemini, a new chatbot, the company quickly faced a backlash. The episode unleashed a fierce debate about whether A.I. should be guided by social values.
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This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
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Supported by
Mr. Musk’s move to open up the code behind Grok is the latest volley in a war to win the A.I. battle, after a suit against OpenAI on the same topic.
Kate Conger and
Reporting from San Francisco
Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world’s richest men in a battle to control the future of A.I.
Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is a product from xAI, the company Mr. Musk founded last year. While xAI is an independent entity from X, its technology has been integrated into the social media platform and is trained on users’ posts. Users who subscribe to X’s premium features can ask Grok questions and receive responses.
By opening the code up for everyone to view and use — known as open sourcing — Mr. Musk waded further into a heated debate in the A.I. world over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse.
Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed proponent of open sourcing, did the same with X’s recommendation algorithm last year, but he has not updated it since.
“Still work to do, but this platform is already by far the most transparent & truth-seeking (not a high bar tbh),” Mr. Musk posted on Sunday in response to a comment on open sourcing X’s recommendation algorithm.
The move to open-source chatbot code is the latest volley between Mr. Musk and ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, which the mercurial billionaire sued recently over breaking its promise to do the same. Mr. Musk, who was a founder and helped fund OpenAI before departing several years later, has argued such an important technology should not be controlled solely by tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which is a close partner of OpenAI.
OpenAI has said it will seek to dismiss the suit.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)
The controversy over open sourcing generative A.I. — which can create realistic images and videos and recreate humanlike text responses — has roiled the tech world over the past year after the explosion in the popularity of the technology. Silicon Valley is deeply divided over whether the coding underlying A.I. should be publicly available, with some engineers arguing that the powerful technology must be guarded against interlopers while others insist that the benefits of transparency outweigh the harms.
By publishing his A.I. code, Mr. Musk planted himself firmly in the latter camp, a decision that could enable him to leapfrog competitors who have had a head start in developing the technology.
The publication of the code will allow other companies and independent software developers to modify and reuse it as they build their own chatbots and other A.I. systems. Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, has also open sourced its A.I. technology, called LLaMA. Google and a prominent French start-up, Mistral, have also done some open sourcing.
Last year, Mr. Musk — who also owns X and SpaceX, and is chief executive officer of Tesla — formed xAI, stating its mission was to “understand reality.” In November, he said investors in his $44 billion take-private deal for X would own a 25 percent stake in xAI.
Mr. Musk has said that no topic should be off-limits for chatbots, criticizing companies that steer their technology to avoid controversy as “woke.”
“If an AI is programmed to push for diversity at all costs, as Google Gemini was, then it will do whatever it can to cause that outcome, potentially even killing people,” Mr. Musk said in a post on Friday.
But at least some of the posturing around open sourcing is closely tied to business interests. Because OpenAI is the market leader, offering the most powerful and arguably the most popular chatbot, it has little reason to open source its code.
Mr. Musk and xAI, on the other hand, are working to catch up and could help level the playing field by open sourcing their code and inviting others to improve the technology.
Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor of computer science at Arizona State University, has argued that open sourcing today’s A.I. technology is the safest approach. But he added that companies like xAI and Meta were not necessarily open-sourcing the technology for that reason.
“Elon Musk and Yann LeCun are not the best messengers for this argument,” he said, referencing Meta’s chief A.I. scientist.
Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at kate.conger@nytimes.com. More about Kate Conger
Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz
News and Analysis
Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a bill to prevent the use of A.I. to copy a performer’s voice. It is the first such measure in the United States.
French regulators said Google failed to notify news publishers that it was using their articles to train its A.I. algorithms, part of a wider ruling against the company for its negotiating practices with media outlets.
Apple is in discussions with Google about using Google’s generative A.I. model called Gemini for its next iPhone.
The Age of A.I.
By interacting with data about genes and cells, A.I. models have made some surprising discoveries and are learning what it means to be alive. What could they teach us someday?
Covariant, a robotics start-up, is using the technology behind chatbots to build robots that learn skills much like ChatGPT does.
When Google released Gemini, a new chatbot, the company quickly faced a backlash. The episode unleashed a fierce debate about whether A.I. should be guided by social values.
A.I.’s booming growth is radically reshaping an already red-hot data center market, raising questions about whether these sites can be operated sustainably.
Few companies better illustrate how A.I. is changing Silicon Valley deal-making than Anthropic, one of the world’s hottest A.I. start-ups.
Advertisement
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
