By Kate Conger & Cade Metz
Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world’s richest men in a battle to control the future of AI. Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is a product from xAI, the company 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’ posts. Users who subscribe to X’s premium features can ask Grok questions and receive responses. By opening the code up for everyone to view and use — known as open sourcing — Musk waded further into a heated debate in the AI world over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse.
Musk has said that no topic should be off-limits for chatbots, criticizing companies that steer their technology to avoid controversy as “woke.”
“If 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,” Musk said in a post on Friday.
The move to open-source chatbot code is the latest volley between Musk and ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, which the mercurial billionaire sued recently over breaking its promise to do the same. 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.
OpenAI has said it will seek to dismiss the suit.
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