Elon Musk announced that his AI startup xAI will share its chatbot, Grok, with the public this week. He said this shortly after filing a lawsuit against OpenAI and expressing dissatisfaction with the company’s move away from its open-source origins.
xAI introduced Grok last year, equipping it with features like access to up-to-date information. Grok is offered to subscribers of xAI’s $16 monthly service. Musk co-founded OpenAI as a response to Google, aiming to keep AI technology accessible.
However, Musk claimed in the recent lawsuit that OpenAI has become closed-source and focused on maximizing profits for Microsoft, deviating from its initial mission of making technology freely available to everyone.
The lawsuit has sparked a discussion among technologists and investors about the value of open-source AI. Vinod Khosla, whose firm supported OpenAI from the beginning, called the lawsuit a big distraction from the goal of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its advantages.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, replied to Khosla’s tweet, accusing him of trying to stop open-source AI research. He added that every important new technology that improves human life faces unnecessary worries, and this situation is no different.
“And @pmarca would you consider open-sourcing the Manhattan Project? National security is at stake here. We’re in a technological and economic competition with China, especially in AI, which we must win. True patriotism lies in actions, not just slogans.”
— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 2, 2024
It would certainly be easy for a state actor to steal their IP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 3, 2024
xAI’s commitment to soon open-sourcing Grok puts it alongside other expanding companies like Meta and the French startup Mistral, which have shared the codes of their chatbots with the public.
Elon Musk has always supported open-source initiatives. Tesla, a company he heads, has made many of its technologies open-source. “Tesla will not sue anyone for patent infringement if they use our technology in good faith,” Musk stated in 2014. X, previously known as Twitter, also made some of its algorithms open-source last year.
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