The biggest news in the tech sphere today is undoubtedly xAI's release of the Grok-3 large language model. This AI model is said to possess human-like reasoning abilities, primarily due to its "chain-of-thought" technology. This allows it to break down complex tasks layer by layer, similar to peeling an onion, for in-depth analysis, somewhat akin to OpenAI's o3 and Deepseek-r1.
When discussing Grok-3, its creator, Elon Musk, is a must-mention. He boldly declared Grok-3 to be "the smartest AI on Earth," even adding, "scarily smart." He believes Grok-3's reasoning capabilities are incredibly powerful, and in his testing, no other AI model can compete with it.
The Grok series was launched by Musk in 2023 with a clear goal: to challenge OpenAI's ChatGPT. Grok-1 was released in November 2023, followed by Grok-2 in August 2024. Grok-3 is the latest upgrade to the series.
Speaking of OpenAI, it's currently a leader in the AI field. Its relationship with Musk has a significant backstory, and Grok's creation is related to this history.
OpenAI was initially founded in 2015 in San Francisco by Sam Altman, Musk, and five others, with a collective investment of $1 billion. At that time, OpenAI and Musk were in a "honeymoon phase." It's said that Sam wanted to attract talent with high salaries, and Musk readily supported this! Joining OpenAI back then meant a $300,000 annual salary plus SpaceX stock – a very generous package.
OpenAI's original vision was to be a non-profit organization, open-sourcing its technology and developing AI for the benefit of humanity. However, OpenAI gradually transformed into a closed-source, for-profit company. This displeased Musk, who felt that OpenAI had lost its way and become a "vassal" of large corporations like Microsoft. Later, Musk was excluded from the OpenAI board. While he stated he was still willing to invest, the rift had formed, and this was one of the reasons he later created Grok.
In March 2019, OpenAI officially announced its transition from "non-profit" to "capped-profit," with a profit ceiling of 100 times the investment amount. Musk has publicly criticized OpenAI, arguing that they have forgotten their original mission, focusing solely on making money and neglecting the potential risks posed by AI. He even sarcastically suggested that OpenAI should be renamed "CloseAI."
On February 10th of this year, Musk offered to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion but was rejected. Sam countered by threatening to acquire Musk's Twitter. If Musk had actually acquired OpenAI, he likely would have open-sourced it directly, which would undoubtedly have been a positive thing for the entire AI field.
In conclusion, the release of Grok-3 is a major event in the AI world. The "love-hate relationship" between Musk and OpenAI has also added a lot of talking points to the AI community. As for how powerful Grok-3 actually is, try it out yourself!
Use Grok for Free on the Web
Official website: https://grok.com
The web chat function is currently open for free, without requiring login or payment. However, due to some well-known reasons, users in China may need a VPN to access it.
Using the Grok API
The API is compatible with the OpenAI SDK. Simply replace the API URL with https://api.x.ai/v1
Then create an API KEY on this page: https://console.x.ai
Available models include: grok-2-latest, grok-2-vision-latest, and grok-3.