Elon Musk Releases New AI Chatbot ‘Grok’ – Elon Musk introduced Grok, an AI chatbot with a “rebellious streak” inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Tesla CEO, who recently cautioned about the significant threat of AI to humanity, announced that Grok, a competitor to ChatGPT, would become accessible to premium subscribers on his X platform following a testing phase.
Musk also shared that Grok has access to user posts on X, a platform he owns, and has a fondness for delivering sarcastic replies. Musk mentioned that Grok, currently in its early testing phase and not accessible to the general public, will eventually be made available to subscribers of X’s highest-tier subscription service, Premium+.
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The term “Grok” is a verb originally coined by the American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, and, according to the Collins dictionary, it signifies “to understand thoroughly and intuitively.” Grok was developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s latest AI venture. The team at xAI detailed the chatbot’s inspiration from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the beloved science fiction comedy by British author Douglas Adams, in a blog post published on a Saturday.
“Grok is an AI modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!” “Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!” The xAI team explained that Grok operated on a substantial language model, which is the core technology supporting AI chatbots, and this model was named Grok-1.
According to the blog post, Grok-1 had outperformed GPT-3.5, the model utilized in the freely accessible ChatGPT version, in certain assessments, such as solving middle-school math problems. However, xAI noted that it still fell short of the most advanced ChatGPT model, GPT-4. “It is only surpassed by models that were trained with a significantly larger amount of training data and computer resources like GPT-4.”
The xAI team said Grok was being made available to a limited number of users in the US as a prototype, adding that “new capabilities and features” would be rolled out in the coming months.According to the Grok website, initial access to the chatbot is being offered to X subscribers under an “early access program.” Musk co-founded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, but stepped away from the company in 2018, saying he “didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do,” as well as citing commitments at his other companies.
Musk has conveyed his concerns about the rapid development pace in companies like OpenAI, and in March, he backed a proposal for a six-month halt in the advancement of potent systems. Yet, come July, Musk changed his view, stating that a pause appeared impractical and introduced xAI with the intention of constructing AI systems with a responsible approach. During his address at the AI safety summit held at Bletchley Park just last week, Musk emphasized the concern that AI poses a threat to humanity, echoing the apprehensions shared by some experts and technology leaders.
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These concerns revolve around the potential for AI systems to become uncontrollable and make decisions that endanger humanity. “I mean, for the first time, we have a situation where there’s something that is going to be far smarter than the smartest human,” he said. Musk then predicted on Thursday that AI – the term for computer systems that can perform tasks typically associated with intelligent beings – would replace all human jobs. Speaking to the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, he said: “There will come a point where no job is needed.”