TechCrunch Minute: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the rest of the billionaires are fighting over the future of AI
TechCrunchMar 03
Musk Releases Grok Chatbot Code
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The 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.
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.
The Spin
Narrative A
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
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.
