Elon Musk's xAI introduced Grok, a new chatbot trained on X social network data, which outperformed ChatGPT in maths and programming
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Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has announced a chatbot called Grok to compete with ChatGPT and other chatbots. For now, the tool is in the early stages of testing for a limited number of users.
Here's What We Know
The company describes Grok as a "somewhat witty" and "rebellious" bot, willing to answer questions that other AI might shy away from. For example, in response to a request for a recipe for cooking cocaine, Grok said it would look it up, but wouldn't help with it.
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
As Musk emphasised, Grok has access to data from social network X (formerly Twitter). This should give it an advantage over its competitors. However, xAI warns that Grok may provide false information, like other language models.
The bot has undergone two months of training and is now available for testing to a limited number of users. In the future, Grok will become part of the paid X Premium+ subscription.
Musk claims that in initial tests based on high school maths and Python coding tasks, Grok outperformed ChatGPT and other models despite having less data to train.
Flashback
The term Grok was coined by Robert A. Heinlein in the 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. In the book, "grok" is a Martian term that has no direct translation on Earth.
Critics have argued over the exact definition of the word. They settled on the version that it means a very deep empathy or intuition about something.
xAI was launched in July, with a team made up of former employees of OpenAI, DeepMind, and other companies. The company is currently still recruiting for some positions.
Musk has previously stated that, today's artificial intelligence vendors lean too heavily toward "politically correct" systems. He said xAI's mission is to create AI for people of all backgrounds and political views.
