Elon Musk, billionaire and White House operative, has made a $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. However, his own company’s approach to open-source AI is under scrutiny.
Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left four years later due to disagreements over direction. He has since maintained that OpenAI should return to its original open-source and safety-focused goals.
However, Musk’s competing xAI startup has faced criticism for its own lack of transparency. While Musk has accused OpenAI of not being open enough with its AI models, his company has only recently begun sharing some of its models, including the Grok 1 model in March.
Other models, such as the latest Grok 3 release, remain closed-source. This raises questions about Musk’s hypocrisy on the issue. He has filed multiple lawsuits against OpenAI, accusing it of abandoning its open-source roots and becoming too closely tied to Microsoft.
The definition of “open source” has evolved in recent years, focusing more on the sharing of model weights rather than full code releases. Despite this shift, xAI’s approach remains similar to OpenAI’s. Musk’s reluctance to adopt an open-source approach is seen as a double standard by critics.
xAI’s models, including Grok 3, are considered “black boxes” because they lack transparency into how they work. This is the same criticism that has been leveled against OpenAI. Whether xAI will change its approach remains to be seen, but it highlights Musk’s unwillingness to hold himself to the same standards as others in the industry.
Source: https://futurism.com/hypocrite-elon-musk-criticizing-openai-open-sourcing-chatgpt-grok