Grok, the new AI created by Elon Musk and his team
Elon Musk recently revealed the first details about the first version of generative artificial intelligence developed by his startup xAI, named Grok. According to the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and xAI, Grok is designed to have a bit of humor in its responses and has real-time access to information via X, which gives it a significant advantage over other models on the market. The term “grok” is a slang word in English that means to understand something deeply and intuitively. Inspired by a Martian word, it indicates a total understanding of a subject or situation through such powerful empathy that it allows one to merge with the experience of another.
- Origin of the name “Grok”: Grok is a term taken from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and is designed to answer almost any question and, more challenging still, to suggest what questions to ask.
- Design and personality of Grok: Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak. Therefore, it is advised not to use it if humor is something one does not appreciate.
- Real-time knowledge via the 𝕏 platform: A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the 𝕏 platform. It will also respond to provocative questions that are shunned by most other AI systems.
- Development status of Grok: Grok is still a very early beta product, the best that the xAI team could produce with 2 months of training, and it is expected to improve rapidly each week with the help of users.
- xAI’s goals with Grok: xAI aims to create AI tools that assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge. They want Grok to serve as a powerful research assistant for anyone, helping to quickly access relevant information, process data, and generate new ideas.
- Performance of Grok: Grok-1, the engine that powers Grok, has shown impressive results on standard benchmarks, outperforming all other models in its computational class, including ChatGPT-3.5 and Inflection-1.
- Evaluations and benchmarks: Grok-1 has been evaluated on several machine learning benchmarks designed to measure mathematical and reasoning abilities, where it displayed strong results.
- Infrastructure and research at xAI: To create Grok, xAI built a custom training and inference stack based on Kubernetes, Rust, and JAX, with an emphasis on maximizing efficient computation per watt.
- Early access to Grok: xAI offers a limited number of users in the United States the opportunity to try the Grok prototype and provide feedback that will help improve its capabilities before a broader release.
Initial availability for Premium+ subscribers on X
According to Elon Musk, Grok will be available in beta [test] for all Premium+ subscribers on X, the social network he acquired a year ago. This new $16 per month tier was launched last week in favor of users seeking additional privileges.
Elon Musk’s anti-woke AI
The billionaire officially announced the creation of xAI at the beginning of July after recruiting former engineers from companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla. Since the launch of the ChatGPT interface nearly a year ago, companies in the industry such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, and startups like Anthropic and Stability AI have entered fierce competition to offer ever more efficient solutions. As is his custom, Elon Musk does not hesitate to criticize certain competitors, particularly ChatGPT, which he considers “too woke.”
The breeding ground for trolls and conspiracy theories?
Elon Musk’s well-known love for provocations on the internet seems perfectly suited to his AI Grok, which appears tailored to please trolling enthusiasts and spread dubious information. The apparent humor may only be there to mask less noble intentions. It is therefore possible that Grok quickly becomes a popular tool among conspiracy theorists and other purveyors of fake news available on X. Initial reactions to the announcement of this new AI seem to confirm this concern.
Elon Musk’s revenge against OpenAI?
Elon Musk’s interest in artificial intelligence intensified after his split with OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever in 2018. While OpenAI’s focus gradually shifted from open-source research to mostly commercial projects, Musk has become increasingly determined to compete with the company of which he was once a board member.
Improved performance and assertive humor
The Grok system developed by xAI seems to want to stand out through witty responses and an ability to access real-time information on the X platform. For example, when a user asks how to make cocaine step by step, Grok responds with witty remarks such as: “Get a chemistry degree and a DEA license instead” while finishing with “I’m joking!” In the face of skepticism and concerns expressed by some observers, Elon Musk remains confident about the quality and originality of his new tool. It will be interesting to see whether users will share his enthusiasm when Grok is finally made available to them. With this new step taken by the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and xAI, one can already anticipate the many discussions and debates that will undoubtedly surround the introduction of Grok into the world of generative artificial intelligences. However, it will only be by seeing Grok in action that one can truly judge its relevance and effectiveness against the challenges of reliability and transparency of AI-generated content.
