Why did Elon flip the bird, and what is Grok?
7th November 2023
Welcome to AI Collision,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
X.com welcomes Grok to the family
Open AI’s DevDay
The “Godmother of AI” speaks her mind
If that’s enough to get the bird tweeting, read on…
AI Collision 💥 Elon turns flips the bird to AI
Did you know that Elon Musk is one of the founders of OpenAI?
You know, the same OpenAI that released ChatGPT onto the world in late 2022, kicking off what can only be described as an AI hype-fuelled mega-boom?
A lot is said about Elon, good and bad, but you can’t deny that he’s probably the most influential person in the world or at least since the turn of the millennia.
Aside from what he did with X.com (the first time around), which became Confinity which became PayPal, completely reshaping the payments industry…
Aside from what he’s done with Tesla, completely reshaping the entire automotive industry…
Aside from what he’s done with SpaceX, completely reshaping the entire commercialisation of space…
Aside from what he’s done with Starlink, completely reshaping the entire satellite internet industry…
He’s since gone on to buy Twitter (at a multi-billion-dollar loss), ditched the Twitter bird and turned it into X.com (yes, that X.com from 24 years ago) … but it’s the new, revamped X.com which is set to become possibly the biggest thing Elon’s done to date.
Elon’s flipped the bird and is turning it into AI
Elon’s always had grand plans for X.com. The fact that it was his first company, founded all the way back in 1999, says a lot about his love for the idea of X.com.
However, it was a long time from X.com in 1999, turning into PayPal, then going dormant, to X.com becoming what we know as the app formerly known as Twitter.
Now it seems all of Elon’s X.com stars are aligning. And he can finally unleash his grand plans to turn X.com into the “everything app”.
That means integrating payments and financial services into X.com. This is something he’s wanted to do since 1999, it seems. And recently, it was reported that he’s given the X.com developers a year to turn X.com into a financial tool someone can use for their “entire financial life”.
He’s said that “if it involves money, it’ll be on our platform.” I take that to mean fiat-currency money, but I also expect that to mean cryptocurrency money, like bitcoin.
That’s one part of it, but the bigger part might be what he unleashed in the early beta release just this week…
It’s known as Grok.
Grok is the AI that Elon has let loose in the X.com universe. Grok is built as an AI chatbot similar to others that are available, such as ChatGPT, Bard and Claude. The name Grok has significance too. Elon, a known sci-fi obsessive, took the name from the sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land by sci-pioneer Robert Heinlein. It is a seminal piece that even inspired Bill Gates to much of his own success. Grok means, to understand something so thoroughly it isn't really possible to learn (or question) anything more about it.
Grok is only in limited release in the US right now, but I don’t expect it will be long until it’s widely available through X.com.
What makes Grok interesting is that you can expect it to be “spicy” (a term being used a lot about it right now), which means it will have some humour in its answers, and I suspect it will be in the image of Elon’s own humour.
Grok is also learning in real time through X.com.
You see, X.com is actually an immense database. It is real-time data about everything happening in the world right now. And Grok is “Feeding” off all that data that people are posting through X.com.
That means Grok is expected to be far better at providing fast, AI-based answers to events as they’re happening in the world. ChatGPT has a Bing-integrated search function, but it’s slow and limited to a Bing search.
Grok will draw on everyone’s data as they post it. How that plays out will be interesting, and as we get to test it first-hand, it will be fun to see how it differs from GPT-4, Bard and Claude.
What we know, though, is that if Grok is learning as we speak and if X.com is fast becoming an all-in-one financial application, then we’re on the cusp of seeing one of the biggest AI collisions of all time: AI and money.
AI Gone Wild 🤪
It feels like every week in AI is a “big” week.
That’s in part due to the speed at which everything is coming at us. It’s also in part due to the human and financial capital being thrown at the sector right now.
Google’s throwing billions at it.
Amazon’s throwing billions at it.
Microsoft is throwing billions at it.
Nvidia is making billions from it…
But every day a new application is popping up that you can test, try and experiment with integrating some different kind of AI.
It’s almost like there’s too much AI news to keep an eye on, but that’s exactly what I’m here for. This week, the biggest things to keep an eye on are Elon’s rollout of Grok, as I explained above, and also everything that’s going to come from OpenAI’s “Devday”.
Devday is a day that OpenAI brings a whole bunch of AI developers together in one place to talk about, work on and build new developments for AI based around the OpenAI platforms.
That means we could very well see some huge leaps forward (again) for GPT-4 and what it can do and what it can integrate with.
We might also see significant leaps forward in new kinds of applications that have or will integrate GPT-4 into their functions.
I think the first wave of AI apps we’re going to see are “assistants”.
That means AI apps that integrate GPT-4 into things like helping to organise your calendar and life – reminders about important events and suggestions (unprompted) for you to do things or to take action on some kind of event in your life.
I also expect to see AI integrate in a big way into the travel industry. Think of your own personal travel agent in an application. I think Booking.com will be a big player in this, as will Expedia.
Instead of going to these sites and messing about with searches (and time), you just ask your AI assistant to sort out flights and accommodations for you where you want to go, when and then it’s just done. Next thing you know, you’ve got tickets in your email and a hotel booked – even transfers and fast-track passes at the airport.
In other words, it’s probably not a good time to be a travel agent (yes, they still do exist) or even a human assistant. If AI can do a lot of the work and organisation, then it doesn’t leave much room for a human version… assuming AI does it well.
Either way, OpenAI’s Devday should be packed with fun stuff – and we’ll keep you posted on the biggest releases to come. So keep an eye on your inbox!
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Wearable Devices Ltd (NASDAQ:WLDS) up 32%
Predictive Oncology (NASDAQ:POAI) up 20%
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) up 16%
Bust 📉
Quantgate Systems (NASDAQ:QGSI) down 30%
Cyngn (NASDAQ:CYN) down 13%
iRobot Corp (NASDAQ:IRBT) down 3%
From the hive mind 🧠
Could you work for an AI boss? This drinks firm thinks an AI CEO is a good idea
Fei-Fei Li is known as the “Godmother of AI” here are her thoughts on AI today
Baidu released its own AI, then Alibaba, now it’s Ant Group’s turn to release AI to the Chinese public
Insider trading is rife among humans. But what if AI could do it…and get away with it?
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️ : The Results Show
Last Thursday, the question was: “Have you ever used ChatGPT?”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure which way the poll would go – I thought that maybe people would have seen it and used it.
But what did our poll tell us?
Well, the results are in…
And the winner is…
No!
That’s taken me a little by surprise. Considering the hype that’s been behind AI and ChatGPT over the last year, the “no’s” won it quite easily.
Here’s the outcome:
I’m going to take this poll again in a few months’ time, and I wonder if that result might swing to the “yes’s”?
Either way, like I said on Thursday, if you haven’t yet, I’d suggest going to give it a try, even just for a bit of a play around.
There will be lots more chances to get your hands on AI in the near future, including ChatGPT and many more, but for easy, accessible AI fun, go check it out if you haven’t.
We’ll have a new poll for you on Thursday. Thanks for voting!
Weirdest AI image of the day
Things that should NOD be AI-powered – r/Weirddalle
ChatGPT quote of the day
"I think generally people underestimate the capability of AI. They sort of think it's a smart human. But it's going to be much more than that. It'll be much smarter than the smartest human."
– Elon Musk
Thanks for reading, see you on Thursday (and don’t forget to leave your comments below)
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
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