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By Brenda Goh and Casey Hall SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Alibaba Group on Tuesday said its CEO and chairman Daniel Zhang will

Less than eight months after discouraging companies from developing advanced artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has unveiled his answer to “woke” AI chatbots like ChatGPT. The tech billionaire claims his new Grok AI is both smarter and funnier than its rivals, offering paid users of X (formerly Twitter) the chance to ask it “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems”. The X boss offered an example of how it will answer “almost anything”, sharing a screenshot of a user asking it how to make cocaine. “Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak,” a blog post announcing its launch noted. “Please don’t use it if you hate humour!” What differentiates it from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard is that it has access to real-time data from X, which Mr Musk took over almost exactly a year ago. Before the takeover, AI firms were using Twitter as a data set to train its models, however the tech billionaire shut this down following the release of ChatGPT last November. Initially labelled “TruthGPT”, Grok takes its name from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land, meaning understanding something thoroughly and intuitively, while the tone of its responses are modelled on the same writing style as Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But with X as its training set, Grok risks mimicking the same misinformation and toxic discourse that has plagued the platform since before Musk’s takeover. Not only does it adopt a more informal tone to its rivals, Grok also appears to have less safety filters preventing it from answering questions about sensitive topics. Despite claiming that Grok outperforms ChatGPT, which is freely available, xAI did acknowledge that it does not yet match the capabilities of OpenAI’s more powerful GPT-4 model – which carries a similar monthly fee to Grok. In its own in-house tests, xAI graded Grok against GPT-4 on the 2023 Hungarian national high school finals in mathematics. Grok passed the exam with a mark of 59 per cent, while GPT-4 scored 68 per cent. In March this year, Mr Musk was among hundreds of leading tech figures to add their name to an open letter calling on all AI labs to pause the training of AI systems. The letter warned that artificial intelligence with “human-competitive intelligence” could pose “profound risks to society and humanity”, potentially leading to the loss of control of human civilisation and even its extinction. This letter of discouragement looks increasingly like a plea to allow his own companies – which include the newly formed xAI – to catch up. Just weeks before signing it, Mr Musk was approaching AI researchers to form xAI, with the explicit intention of taking on ChatGPT. The world’s richest person had been instrumental in the formation of OpenAI in 2015 but cut ties after it became a for-profit endeavour. His team included researchers from OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind, who had experience in developing large language models (LLMs) that power AI chatbots. The reason he cited for creating his own chatbot was due to apparent fears that these tech companies were creating “woke” AI systems. “The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly,” he tweeted last December in reply to a post by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. The new chatbot fits in with Musk’s broader goals that he is hoping to achieve with his other companies, including SpaceX’s mission to transform humanity into a multi-planetary species “Unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilisation will never become multiplanetary,” Mr Musk said. In justifying why it built Grok, xAI said its goal was to create a tool that “maximally benefits all of humanity”. The blog post explained: “We believe that it is important to design AI tools that are useful to people of all backgrounds and political views.” Read More How Elon Musk’s ‘spicy’ Grok compares to ‘woke’ ChatGPT Musk shares cocaine recipe in effort to prove Grok AI is ‘rebellious’ Elon Musk unveils new sarcasm-loving AI chatbot for premium X subscribers 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity Musk shares cocaine recipe in effort to prove Grok AI is ‘rebellious’

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Controversial influencer Andrew Tate has put himself in the spotlight again after sitting down for an interview with right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson. Carlson shared the two-and-a-half-hour-long conversation between the pair on Twitter as part of his new independent talk show named “Tucker on Twitter”, following his sacking from FOX News in April. Tate, along with his brother Tristan and two other associates, has been charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter During his interview with Carlson, he discussed his opinions “masculinity” and other aspects of his life and personal experiences. The tweet containing the interview has been viewed more 107 million times, according to Twitter statistics. Is it the most-watched television interview ever? Some of Tate’s fans have made the claim that the interview is the most-watched TV interview of all time, with one “fan” Twitter account, writing: “Andrew Tate's interview with Tucker Carlson is the most watched interview of all time. With the tweet, they shared a screenshot of a Wikipedia page with the title “List of most watched television interviews”. An arrow pointing to the top of the table listed the Tate and Carlson interview in the number one spot, however, the interview was never aired on television and instead was posted on Twitter. Sportskeeda revealed the Wikipedia screenshot with either edited or photoshopped because the current page lists a 1993 Oprah Winfrey interview with Michael Jackson as the most-watched television interview with an average viewership of 62.3 million. The false claim by Tate’s fans was made despite the Wikipedia page stating: “This is specifically on broadcast television and not on other television sources such as YouTube, Twitter or other online source.” However, the interview might be able to claim the title of 'most watched ever' if the television side of the discussion is ignored. The interview has outperformed the widely reported most viewed video on Twitter, which was a piece of skill by Lionel Messi that had more than 19 million views. However, its got a long way to go before it can outperform the biggest video on YouTube; 'Babyshark' which has been viewed an astonishing 13 billion times. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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NEWTON, Mass. & PETACH TIKVA, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 9, 2023--