analysisElon Musk just shared the recipe to his 'anti-woke' chatbot Grok with the entire world. Is that a bad thing?ScreenshotABy Ange LavoipierreTopic:Information Technology IndustryMon 18 MarMonday 18 MarchMon 18 Mar 2024 at 6:32amElon Musk has released the code to Grok, partly as a challenge OpenAI to be more open.(Reuters: Ludovic Marin)Welcome to your new weekly tech update, from national technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre, featuring the best, worst and strangest news in AI, platforms, innovation and the online world.There areplentyof souffle recipes on the internet.And, not to brag, but I reckon I own most or all the basicingredientsrequired to make one.Still, in all my life, I'm yet to produce a single souffle.I've never built an AI chatbot either, but apparently it's at least as tricky to nail as a fluffy baked egg tart.As of Monday, I'm no closer to making either despite Elon Musk's decision toreleaseboth the recipe and the ingredients for his "anti-woke" chatbot,Grok, on Monday morning Australian time.Musk's company x.AI published thesource code, along with another crucial component known as the model's "weights", almost a week after hepromisedto, in a post on X.It's a practice known as "open sourcing".The move is being seen as part of a Musk's larger campaign to try to embarrass chatbot rival OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, whohe’s suingfor being too "closed".No matter his precise reasons, the glee on certain corners of the internet ispalpable.To return to the souffle metaphor, this is the AI equivalent of a celebrity chef revealing the secret to their signature dish, and hand-delivering you the ingredients.As discussed, a pointless exercise in my case, but incredibly useful to the right French chef.The difference (perhaps the only one) between souffle and an AI chatbot is that I'm yet to taste one that's considered athreat to democracyorglobal safety.I'll spare you yetanotherlistofthe world's anxieties about Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Musk's Grok, but knowing such a list exists, it's easy to see why the decision might be considered controversial.Geoffrey Hinton for example, one of three men described as the "godfathers of AI", hasspoken outagainst open sourcing LLMs in the past, arguing that they're ripe for exploitation by malicious actors.Aside from that danger, the practice of open sourcing doesn't make intuitive business sense at first.Why would a company pay top scientists to spend months or years developing a cutting-edge AI model, only to give it all away for free?In short, it's about whether outsiders can take it further.Aleaked memofrom 2023, purporting to come from inside Google, expresses concern that both Google and OpenAI, the current market leaders, could ultimately be overtaken by open source efforts.Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Meta and another of the so-called godfathers, hasarguedthat releasing the models is good for progress, and is the quickest path to building superhuman AI.Grok is the largest LLM to be released to date, but it's not the first.In February 2023, Meta released its own language model LLaMA selectively, via a Google form process that'sstill activeat the time of writing.Within days, LLaMA's code had beenleakedmore widely, including to 4chan.It was a predictable outcome, and Elon Musk has taken even fewer precautions than Meta in releasing Grok.Within hours, other tech companies and AI scientists weresharing their plansto build their own, smaller models, based on x.AI's research.Between the anxiety and the glee, plenty of people are shrugging their shoulders too.To use the parlance of the medium, Grok isconsidered somewhat “mid”as far as chatbots go.It's billed as "vulgar" but has been known to say stuff like"buckle up, buttercup", andonce quoted the usage policy of its rival ChatGPTin declining to respond to a prompt.While mocking Elon Musk's projects is a time-honoured and cherished internet tradition, these arguments might be missing the point.The significance of releasing Grok's code has less to do with what it is now, and more to do with what it will become based on the contributions of outsiders.As for the harms everyone keeps mentioning, many areno longertheoretical, but as literally no-one has ever said, you gotta break a few eggs to make a souffle, right?What else, you ask?Well, the EU has beaten the rest of the world topassing a fully fledged AI law. It's been in the works for a while, but still a Big Deal!Uber is paying$272 million to Australia's taxi operators, as part of a legal settlement. There's a joke about surge pricing here, but I can't for the life of me find it.Deep breaths everyone, there's actuallya long way to gobefore TikTok faces a ban in the US.And if it's all too hard, go right ahead and bliss outon the oddly soothing and pleasantly spooky vibes at r/LiminalSpace, my Subreddit of the week, where the corridors are endless and time is a construct.Ciao for now.