Federal agencies will now be able to use xAI’s models via the partnership. The news comes after xAI’s tech has been widely criticized for its lack of safety processes and transparency — earlier this month, experts told The Verge about their fears related to xAI, Grok, and its surveillance risks.
[The Wall Street Journal]
AI firms are now working with weapons makers and the military. Safety expert Heidy Khlaaf breaks down what that means.
It cost xAI around $490 million, according to a report by AI research institute Epoch AI, which is more than nine times the estimated cost of training Meta’s Llama 3.
[Epoch AI]
The workers focused on Gemini, AI Overviews, and other products, and the news came amid conflicts about pay, working conditions, and the workers’ concern that they’re training AI to replace their own jobs, Wired reported. And at Elon Musk’s xAI, more than 500 data annotation staffers were let go on Friday, per Business Insider.
According to Business Insider at least 500 data annotators at xAI were abruptly let go on Friday afternoon. The company told workers in an email that it was part of a shift away from general trainers, and that it would be expanding its team of specialist tutors by 10-fold.
Multiple emails viewed by Business Insider read:
“After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we’ve decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles. This strategic pivot will take effect immediately... As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude.”
xAI’s track record with safety is concerning, Senator Elizabeth Warren says in letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Why the EyesOnOpenAI coalition is pushing the AI giant to help humanity instead of chase profits.
Public benefit corporations have societal and environmental obligations besides their financial goals and legally have to report on how those obligations are going. But at some point before May 2024, xAI quietly changed its structure so it wouldn’t need to do those things anymore, CNBC reported.
He wrote on X, “It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!” Since software companies don’t build physical hardware, he wrote — name-checking Microsoft as an example — he wants to fully automate such a company using AI. The Verge found a filing suggesting a Macrohard Ventures, LLC, was incorporated in Delaware last Friday, but it’s unclear whether it’s linked to Musk.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
Why Amazon AGI Labs chief David Luan thinks solving agents is the next ‘S-curve’ for AI.
Whenever a user hit “share” on a Grok conversation, the URL it generated was also searchable on Google, Forbes reported. And xAI isn’t the only company to have reckoned with this — OpenAI recently said it would discontinue its own such feature.
Igor Babuschkin’s last day at the company was today, he announced on X, writing that he wants to “continue on my mission to bring about AI that’s safe and beneficial to humanity.” He said he would start a firm called Babuschkin Ventures, which will focus on “AI safety research and backs startups in AI and agentic systems that advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe.”
[X (formerly Twitter)]
If you want to know what an AI system is doing, look for transparency from the creator instead.
Online safety laws keep ordinary people from expressing themselves, while companies like xAI cause real harm.
As Elon’s Grok chatbot keeps adding sexy bots for us talk to, one commenter predicts a productive beat for a future Verge staffer.
stereoesque:
“How long until The Verge is forced to hire a fulltime Grok Sex Chatbot Reporter?”
Get today’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Elon Musk announced that the chatbot’s controversial image-to-video feature has expanded to Android following its iOS launch, and is now free to all US users “for the next few days.” Musk hasn’t yet responded to concerns around its ability to make nude celebrity deepfakes, but now Grok users won’t need to pay a subscription fee to do so.
Outside of video, Musk says that future plans for Grok will include ads in the bot’s responses.
xAI has released its latest chatbot companion, “Valentine” — the emo-flavored anime boyfriend that Elon Musk modeled after broody fictional heartthrobs like Edward Cullen and Christian Grey. Like the busty blonde “Ani” companion, you’ll need a $30-per-month SuperGrok subscription to access Valentine, but please note that touching grass is free.
In April, xAI asked workers to record their facial expressions as part of efforts to train Grok to understand human emotions, according to a report from Business Insider. During the process, xAI reportedly had employees sign a form that gives the company access to their “likeness” for training and “inclusion in and promotion of commercial products and services.”
xAI has since launched a flirtatious 3D anime AI “companion” and teased the launch of another modeled after Edward Cullen.
Want to help xAI create more AI avatars after my colleague Victoria Song said Grok’s anime companion made her want to “bleach my soul and get myself to a nunnery”? You can now apply to be a fullstack engineer or a mobile Android engineer where that’s your full-time job. The salary range is $180,000 - $440,000.
Jewish Insider reports that a group of mainly Democratic lawmakers are asking xAI about some of the worst messages from Grok’s Nazi meltdown, demanding to know how it happened. As interesting as the answer might be — beyond the changes we already know about — ad-hoc investigation of legal (at least in the US) chatbot speech is probably not a road we want to go down without caution. But the sheer absurd awfulness of the quotes is a pretty striking failure for anybody working on Grok, too.
The late evening live demo featured rambling on whether AI would be ‘bad or good for humanity.’
Elon Musk’s AI company has been granted a permit for 15 natural gas turbines to power a Memphis data center, along with limits on their emissions, which include smog-forming nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide.
The company has been accused of running the generators without permits for almost a year, and the Southern Environmental Law Center claims there are many more than that — raising the question of whether xAI will really stop at 15 now.
Kyle Chayka, who wrote for this website about the “airspace” aesthetic created by social media, is now looking into how LLM models affect creativity. He suggests that if Silicon Valley once homogenized decor — and, to some degree, created beige influencers — it may now be making LLM users less original, too.
[newyorker.com]
