Elon Musk’s xAI has launched Grok, an AI system designed to not only answer questions but also suggest what inquiries to pose.
Unlike conventional AI, Grok is infused with wit and a hint of rebellion and sarcasm, making it a humorous companion for users. Drawing real-time knowledge from the 𝕏 platform, Grok can tackle questions most AI systems shy away from.
Though still in its early beta phase, Grok’s potential is evident. The xAI Team, responsible for its creation, emphasizes its two-month training period and anticipates rapid improvements with user feedback.
Groking will become like Googling
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2023
xAI’s mission revolves around crafting AI tools that propel humanity’s quest for knowledge. Grok’s development aims to gather diverse feedback, ensuring the creation of AI tools beneficial to all. The company envisions Grok as a potent research assistant, aiding users in accessing information and fostering innovation. The ultimate objective is to harness AI in the pursuit of understanding.
Grok’s engine, Grok-1, underwent development over four months, with Grok-0 serving as its prototype. Grok-1’s capabilities have been tested against various benchmarks, showcasing its prowess in math and reasoning. Notably, Grok-1 outperformed other models in its class and was only surpassed by models with more extensive training data such as OpenAI’s latest GPT-4.
TIL Scaling API requests is like trying to keep up with a never-ending orgy. #GrokThots pic.twitter.com/U2X5sCVX0S
— Christopher Stanley ⛄ (@cstanley) November 5, 2023
To further assess Grok-1’s capabilities, xAI evaluated it on the 2023 Hungarian national high school finals in mathematics. Grok achieved a commendable grade, proving its effectiveness on real-world datasets, coming in second to GPT-4 and ahead of GPT-3.5 and Claude 2 from Anthropic (founded by former OpenAI executives).
xAI’s engineering team has built a robust infrastructure using Kubernetes, Rust, and JAX to support Grok’s development. The team has tackled challenges like GPU failures and has emphasized maximizing compute efficiency.
Rust, known for its scalability and reliability, has been instrumental in ensuring infrastructure stability. As xAI gears up for future advancements, they invite enthusiasts to join their team.
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
xAI’s research focuses on enhancing Grok’s capabilities. Key areas include scalable oversight with AI assistance, formal verification for safety, long-context understanding, adversarial robustness, and multimodal capabilities. xAI is committed to ensuring AI remains a positive force and is actively seeking collaborators who share their vision.
Grok also has a ‘fun’ and ‘regular’ mode and there’s also some easter eggs that have yet to be discovered.
These are some of the UI features in Grok. First, it allows you to multi-task. You can run several concurrent conversations and switch between them as they progress. pic.twitter.com/aXAG0M2oPF
— Toby Pohlen (@TobyPhln) November 5, 2023
The AI startup is rolling out early access to Grok for a select number of users in the U.S., but X Premium+ subscribers can get access to the beta now.
When will Grok debut in Canada? Musk replied to a query about the US-only launch and said that Grok “should not be geographically limited” and that they “will fix,” suggesting a global launch will be available soon.
