Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Musk Open-Sources Grok 2.5, fighting OpenAI

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Musk Open-Sources Grok 2.5, fighting OpenAI · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
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  This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, The
• 0:08
  Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
• 0:13
  I'm your host Will Walden, Elon Musk's AI company XAI has
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  released Grok 2.5 Urban Open Source License, raising one
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  question what exactly does Elon Musk gain from giving away his
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  code? This makes XAI the first major
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  U.S. company to open source, a flagship conversational model
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  while it's still considering competitive and it directly
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  challenges the closed source strategies of other companies
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  like Open AI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind.
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  Musk framed the decision as a philosophical one about
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  transparency, but the decision also positions XAI to expand its
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  influence without outspending its rivals and user acquisition
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  or cloud infrastructure. Now.
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  XAI published the weights and architecture for Grok 2.5 Friday
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  night, uploading them to a public GitHub repository under
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  the Apache 2 Point O license. A license allows anyone to use,
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  modify, or build on Grok 2.5, including for commercial
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  purposes, without paying XAI anything or attributing anything
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  to XAI. Now this immediately makes Grok
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  2.5 one of the most permissively licensed large language models
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  ever released at this scale. The model comes in two sizes, a
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  314 billion parameter version trained with mixture of experts
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  techniques and a smaller dense version with 25 billion
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  parameters. Both are trained on publicly
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  available and licensed data sources, according to X AI and
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  Elon Musk described the release as a commitment to openness and
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  said it aligns with XA is broader mission to develop AI
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  that benefits all of humanity. He previously criticized Sam
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  Altman and Open AI for switching to a closed source model after
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  becoming a for profit company in March.
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  XAI open source Croc 1, though that model lagged way behind
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  current commercial systems, Croc 2.5 narrows that gap
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  considerably. According to internal
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  evaluations, Croc 2.5 ranks close to GPT 4 on several
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  benchmarks, including MMLU, which is massive multitask
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  language understanding and Human Evil, a programming test
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  commonly used to measure LLM coding capabilities.
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  So releasing Grok 2.5 under Apache 2 Point O immediately
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  places pressure on Sam Altman and Open AI in Anthropic, who
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  have argued that safety risks justify keeping their most
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  capable models closed. Musk has openly dismissed that
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  rationale, claiming that companies are using safety as an
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  excuse to maintain control over their code base and their user
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  base. Now by Elon open sourcing Grok
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  2.5 X AI makes it easier for startups, researchers and other
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  companies to train on a strong base model without building from
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  scratch. The trade off Less control for
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  broader adoption mirrors what Meta has done with Llama two and
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  three. Though Meta still uses a non
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  commercial license, the release also serves A practical purpose.
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  Grok runs inside X, where it appears the chatbot for premium
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  Subs. Making Grok 2.5 open source
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  gives Musk access to a global pool of developers who can test,
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  improve, and adapt the system without being on XA is payroll.
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  Now. That outsourcing effect has
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  already benefited Llama Meta's ecosystem, and Musk appears to
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  be betting that it can be done with Grok as well.
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  XAI has stated that future versions, including Grok 3, may
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  not be open source, suggesting that Grok 2.5 may serve as the
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  platform's long term public version while development
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  continues behind the scenes on other models.
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  Now, Musk has also said the Grok 2.5 has been trained to be
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  maximally truthful, quality that remains difficult to measure.
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  XAI claims that Grok now outperforms Claude 2.1, Gemini
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  1.5, and GPT 4 in some conversational tasks, though
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  external benchmarks vary on that.
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  Grok 2.5 is not connected to Real Time Search or X's live
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  data feed, though that's unlike the private chat bot used by X
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  users. That means developers using the
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  open source Grok will not have access to Musk's internal data
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  pipelines, which remain a competitive asset unique to the
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  version of Grok embedded within X.
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  And open sourcing Grok 2.5 also gives XAI a way to compete with
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  Big Tech without relying on partnerships.
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  Unlike Anthropic, which has tied itself closely to Amazon, or
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  Open AI, which remains linked to Microsoft, XAI operates as an
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  independent entity that would benefits from its access to X's
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  user data in its upcoming integration with Tesla's
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  interface hardware. Now, the open source model
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  allows XAI to sidestep capital constraints by letting external
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  users do much of the refinement and experimentation that would
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  otherwise require dedicated in house teams.
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  I want to know if you're on your podcast platform right now.
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  If you have comments, leave a comment.
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  Would you use grok at home? Would you be able to mix it
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  yourself? Would you download it from
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  GitHub and be able to use it? Let me know.
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  Let me know what what comes of this.
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  So let's get back into Grok. Though the 2.5 version mixture
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  of Experts architecture divides the model into separate
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  subnetworks, only a portion of which activate at any given
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  time, this design improves efficiency and reduces training
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  costs, especially when deployed at scale.
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  It also means that developers who download Grok 2.5 will need
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  infrastructure capable of handling that complexity.
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  That may limit adoption among individual users or small teams,
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  but larger labs and cloud based EI platforms can run the model
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  with relative ease and for free. Releasing such a large scale
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  open source model at this time sends a huge signal to the
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  industry. XAI is betting on diffusion over
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  exclusivity. By removing licensing friction,
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  it creates a channel for grok based variance to proliferate
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  across research labs, startups and independent projects.
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  Musk appears to believe that wide availability will help
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  create loyalty and technical entrenchment, even if it's
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  limits of the company ability to monetize Grok directly and make
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  money from every user. The decision also reinforces
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  Musk's public feud with Open AI and Sam Altman.
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  He Co founded the company in 2015, then left in 2018 after
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  internal disagreements. Since then, Musk has attacked
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  Open AI repeatedly, suing it earlier this year and accusing
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  CEO Sam Altman of betraying its founding principles.
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  XA is release of Croc 2.5 under a fully open license marks a
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  clear ideological split from the commercial closed source path
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  that Open AI has taken since its partnership with Microsoft, and
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  Croc 2.5 is now freely available to download on GitHub.
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  You can go do it right now. They have install instructions
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  and model weights posted alongside this license.
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  Any developer can fine tune it for their own applications.
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  You can use it for whatever you want to use it for and they have
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  no say over what you do with it. Download the code, you can do
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  whatever you want to with it now.
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  You can integrate it into custom pipelines or study its
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  architecture for academic purposes.
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  You can make a for profit company using Grok.
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  XAI has not imposed any restrictions on use beyond what
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  is standard under Apache 2 Point O, which includes liability
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  disclaimers. But there's no functional
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  limitations on you. You can just go wild and build
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  whatever you want to build. They're planning a flag right
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  now in a part of the EI space that remains divided between
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  access and control. The release turns Grok into a
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  public tool now that does something you get on X or in
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  your Tesla. It's not just a product anymore.
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  This is for everybody. And Musk claimed this earlier
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  this year that he was going to release Grok open source and
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  everybody would be able to use it.
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  Now, like we said before, the next version of Grok will be
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  closed source. They're planning on using Grok
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  2.5 for testing and so they can have something available for
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  people to use and when they upgrade from the next version of
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  Grok to two versions after or even a version after, we might
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  see that on GitHub as well. I'm an open source proponent.
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  I've used it for thousands of development jobs in the past and
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  still doing that now. So I think this is a great move
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  by X AI. Let me know what you think in
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  the comments and I'll see you in the next one.
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  Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
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  I really do appreciate your support.
• 9:27
  If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
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  button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
• 9:32
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• 9:34
  It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
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  miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
• 9:40
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• 9:43
  And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
• 9:46
  to patreon.com/stagezero and please take care of yourselves
• 9:51
  and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.