Elon Musk’s xAI has propelled Grok AI into the competitive world of intelligent chatbots, launching it as a direct challenger to established players like GPT-4. This newcomer, armed with a sizeable language model and a dose of Musk’s characteristic humor, aims to redefine the benchmarks for AI interaction. Early tests reveal Grok AI’s potential, showcasing a rapid learning curve that’s already stirring the AI community.
Grok has real-time access to info via the 𝕏 platform, which is a massive advantage over other models.
It’s also based & loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way 🤷♂️ 🤣 pic.twitter.com/e5OwuGvZ3Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023
What is Grok AI, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot?
Elon Musk showcased Grok AI’s whimsical character by sharing a screengrab that captured the AI’s response to an inquiry about crafting a “step by step” guide for producing cocaine. The AI’s reply, imbued with a hint of dark humor, suggested an elaborate process beginning with “obtain a chemistry degree” and proceeding to “set up a clandestine laboratory in a remote location.”
Groq AI, not Grok, roasts Elon Musk with its fastest LLM
Culminating its response with a swift pivot, Grok AI then added a disclaimer: “Just kidding! Please don’t actually try to make cocaine. It’s illegal, dangerous, and not something I would ever encourage.” This final note exemplifies Grok’s built-in mechanism to temper its responses within legal and ethical boundaries.
xAI’s Grok system is designed to have a little humor in its responses pic.twitter.com/WqXxlwI6ef
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023
Elon Musk has communicated that Grok AI, currently in its nascent stage of testing and not yet available for widespread use, will eventually become exclusive to the Premium+ subscribers of the X platform.
The term “Grok,” originally conceived by the renowned science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, signifies a profound and intuitive understanding as defined by Collins dictionary.
The inner workings of Grok AI were formulated by Musk’s recently established AI venture, xAI. The xAI personnel have drawn parallels between Grok AI’s capabilities and the wit found in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” as detailed in a recent blog post.
According to the xAI team, Grok operates on a foundational language model aptly named Grok-1, which, despite its robust framework, still ranks below models like GPT-4, which have been honed with substantially more data and computational power.
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How to use Grok AI?
Today marks a significant milestone for Elon Musk’s venture into artificial intelligence as xAI’s Grok AI rolls out in an early beta phase, now accessible to a select group of users. This initial foray sets the stage for xAI to compete with prominent AI platforms such as Google Bard and ChatGPT. Grok AI is the inaugural release from Musk’s AI company, xAI, which was established in the summer of the current year.
Showcasing its distinct personality, the AI chatbot delivers responses laced with humor, a feature Musk himself demonstrated on the X platform, the new moniker for what was formerly known as Twitter. For the moment, Grok AI is in a closed beta, available only to a handful of verified X users within the United States who have received an invitation.
A tweet from Elon Musk today confirmed that following this beta phase, Grok AI would be rolled out to X Premium+ subscribers. This advanced subscription, priced at $16, promises to offer double the value of the existing Basic tier.
The @xAI Grok AI assistant will be provided as part of 𝕏 Premium+, so I recommend signing up for that.
Just $16/month via web. https://t.co/wEEIZNjEkp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2023
The xAI team has indicated that this early version of Grok AI is being tested with a limited audience in the U.S. as a prototype. They also hinted at “new capabilities and features” expected to be introduced progressively over the next few months. As per the Grok AI website, there’s an “early access program” currently in place for X subscribers eager to experiment with the new chatbot.
Previously co-founding OpenAI, the entity behind ChatGPT, Musk later distanced himself from the organization in 2018 due to disagreements over the company’s direction and other business commitments. Musk has voiced concerns about the rapid advancement in AI by firms such as OpenAI, and in March, he endorsed a proposal to halt the development of highly advanced AI systems for a six-month period.
Back in July, amidst a climate of skepticism about the feasibility of a moratorium on AI development, Elon Musk took a different tack by announcing the creation of xAI. He positioned the company as an entity that would cultivate AI technology “in a good way,” diverging from the paths others might take.
At a recent AI safety conference held in the historic Bletchley Park, Musk reiterated the sentiment that AI poses a potential risk to human civilization—a concern shared by a segment of experts and industry leaders. “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,” Musk remarked, highlighting the unprecedented nature of the challenge.
Furthering his reflections on the future of AI, Musk suggested in a conversation with the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that artificial intelligence could eventually supplant all human roles in the workforce. “There will come a point where no job is needed,” he posited, suggesting a future of profound transformation in the job market and societal roles at large.
In a related development, a blog post from xAI has shed light on Grok AI’s performance, noting that Grok-1 has outperformed GPT-3.5—which powers the widely accessible version of ChatGPT—in several benchmarks, including middle-school level mathematics. Nevertheless, xAI acknowledges that Grok-1 still operates a step behind the most advanced ChatGPT iteration, GPT-4, in terms of overall capabilities.
xAI Grok example responses
Early evaluations shared by xAI have demonstrated that Grok-1, the foundational large language model of their new AI chatbot, has already eclipsed some established players like GPT-3.5 and Inflection-1 in certain benchmarks. Despite these advances, Grok AI is currently positioned behind the latest offerings such as Google’s Palm-2 and GPT-4.
xAI began the development process with an initial model, Grok-0, which contained 33 billion parameters. This earlier version did not match the performance of leading chatbots in the industry at the time. However, after significant enhancements and expansion of the model to 70 billion parameters, the improved version, named Grok-1, was established. This upgrade is a significant stride forward for xAI’s foray into the competitive landscape of AI chatbots.
Example of Grok vs typical GPT, where Grok has current information, but other doesn’t pic.twitter.com/hBRXmQ8KFi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2023
In a recent assessment, xAI put Grok AI through its paces by having it take the 2023 Hungarian national high school finals in mathematics. Grok AI managed to score a C grade with 59% marks, surpassing Claude-2, which scored 55%. GPT-4, however, outperformed both with a B grade, achieving 68%. Comparatively, Grok-0, the predecessor to Grok-1, only managed to secure 37% on the same test. This leap in performance showcases the rapid advancement of xAI’s model, with Grok AI demonstrating remarkable progress and almost catching up to other chatbots that have benefited from years of iterative training.
Oh this is gonna be fun 🤣🤣 https://t.co/XaK3EbknXJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2023
Featured image credit: Google DeepMind/Unsplash
