{"id":46467,"date":"2024-03-17T23:57:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T23:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/elon-musk-to-open-source-grok-chatbot-in-latest-ai-war-escalation\/"},"modified":"2024-03-17T23:57:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T23:57:29","slug":"elon-musk-to-open-source-grok-chatbot-in-latest-ai-war-escalation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/elon-musk-to-open-source-grok-chatbot-in-latest-ai-war-escalation\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk to Open Source Grok Chatbot in Latest AI War Escalation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world\u2019s richest men in a battle to control the future of A.I.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel \u201cThe Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy,\u201d 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\u2019 posts. Users who subscribe to X\u2019s premium features can ask Grok questions and receive responses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By opening the code up for everyone to view and use \u2014 known as open sourcing \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed proponent of open sourcing, did the same with X\u2019s recommendation algorithm last year, but he has not updated it since.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cStill work to do, but this platform is already by far the most transparent &amp; truth-seeking (not a high bar tbh),\u201d Mr. Musk <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1769459571989295201\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">posted<\/a> on Sunday in response to a comment on open sourcing X\u2019s recommendation algorithm. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The move to open-source chatbot code is the latest volley between Mr. Musk and ChatGPT\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">OpenAI has said it will seek to dismiss the suit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The controversy over open sourcing generative A.I. \u2014 which can create realistic images and videos and recreate humanlike text responses \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last year, Mr. Musk \u2014 who also owns X and SpaceX, and is chief executive officer of Tesla \u2014 formed xAI, stating its mission was to \u201cunderstand reality.\u201d In November, he said investors in his $44 billion take-private deal for X would own a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1726177644671091192?s=20\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">25 percent stake<\/a> in xAI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Musk has said that no topic should be off-limits for chatbots, criticizing companies that steer their technology to avoid controversy as \u201cwoke.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf 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,\u201d Mr. Musk said in <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1768746706043035827?s=12&amp;t=mTiIwU_XGeFY8FjVfo8Unw\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a post on Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor of computer science at Arizona State University, has argued that open sourcing today\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cElon Musk and Yann LeCun are not the best messengers for this argument,\u201d he said, referencing Meta\u2019s chief A.I. scientist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world\u2019s 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 \u201cThe Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy,\u201d is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}