In response to Musk’s lawsuit, OpenAI released emails indicating that Musk supported the idea of creating a for-profit entity and merging with Tesla, transforming the combined entity into a ‘cash cow.’
Elon Musk announced on Monday that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, would open-source its ChatGPT competitor, Grok, within the week. This announcement came shortly after he filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing it of deviating from its original non-profit mission in favor of a profit-driven model.
Musk also shared on X, the social media platform he owns, that xAI would open-source Grok this week. This move could allow the public to freely experiment with the technology’s underlying code, aligning xAI with other companies like Meta and France’s Mistral, which have open-sourced their AI models. Google has released an AI model called Gemma, which external developers can adapt to their needs.
Musk has frequently expressed concerns about the profit-driven use of technology by major tech companies, including Google. He initiated legal action against OpenAI, a company he co-founded in 2015 and left three years later, earlier this month. In response, OpenAI released emails indicating that Musk had supported the idea of creating a for-profit entity and proposed a merger with Tesla to transform the combined entity into a ‘cash cow.’
The debate over open-sourcing in AI has been ongoing among tech investors, including OpenAI supporter Vinod Khosla and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, especially since Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. While open-sourcing can accelerate innovation, some experts caution that open-source AI models could be exploited by terrorists for creating chemical weapons or developing a super-intelligence beyond human control.
At last year’s AI Safety Summit in Britain, Musk expressed his desire to establish a ‘third-party referee’ to oversee AI development firms and raise alarms if necessary. In pursuit of an alternative to OpenAI and Google, Musk founded xAI to develop what he termed a “maximum truth-seeking AI.” In December, xAI introduced Grok to Premium+ subscribers of X.
