Musk Releases Grok Chatbot Code

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Facts

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) company xAI, owned by Elon Musk, has released — open-sourced — the computer code used to build its chatbot Grok. This follows Musk's decision to open-source the recommendation algorithm for X, formerly Twitter, last year.1
  • While xAI released the base code for its chatbot, it didn't go as far as releasing the training data used to build it. Without going into specifics, it said the Grok-1 is a 314B parameter Mixture-of-Expert model built on a "custom" stack.2
  • Grok, which was launched last year to X Premium+ subscribers, can access some data from X, formerly Twitter, although the open-source model cannot. xAI also noted that the model hasn't been trained for any specific applications, such as conversations.2
  • Musk has criticized other AI companies for not open-sourcing their codes, such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI, of which he was a founding member before leaving the company several years later.3
  • Musk sued OpenAI earlier this month for committing what he describes as a "betrayal" of its original goal of being a nonprofit.2
  • Musk has also said that chatbots should not exclude any topics from their platforms. Last week he criticized Google for programming its chatbot, called Gemini, "to push for diversity at all costs," adding that doing so could possibly result in "killing people."1

Sources: 1The New York Times, 2TechCrunch, and 3World News.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Hyscaler. Just as he did with the recommendation algorithm for X, Musk is practicing what he preaches. Not only is he opening his own company secrets to the world, but he's doing so to allow others to get a piece of the AI pie and help further the technology's advancement. This move should also help alleviate ethical concerns, as the path toward AI safety can only be accomplished when companies are transparent with their user base.
  • Narrative B, as provided by The Register. Musk has exaggerated his commitment to transparency regarding both his past and present endeavors. While claiming OpenAI has failed to embrace its principle of being open and not-for-profit, recently released emails show Musk was just as eager to monetize the program and even integrate it into his for-profit company Tesla. As for Grok, Musk still hasn't released the data he used to train the code, which means this move was only partly transparent.

Predictions