11/06/2023

Elon Musk Announces Grok

He called it a ‘rebellious' AI without guardrails

Last week, Elon Musk flew to the U.K. to hype up the existential risk posed by artificial intelligence. A couple of days later, he announced that his latest company, xAI, had developed a powerful AI—one with fewer guardrails than the competition.

The AI model, called Grok (a name that means "to understand" in tech circles), "is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don't use it if you hate humor!" reads an announcement on the company's website. "It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems."

The announcement does not explain what a “spicy” or “rebellious” means, but most commercial AI models will refuse to generate sexually explicit, violent, or illegal content, and they are designed to avoid expressing biases picked up from their training data. Without such guardrails, the worry is that an AI model could help terrorists develop a bomb or could result in products that discriminate against users based on characteristics such as race, gender or age.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.