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on october 1, openai held its annual developer conference "devday 2024" in san francisco. at this time, openai is about to receive a financing of us$6.6 billion, setting the largest financing in the history of silicon valley.

later on the same day, musk held a unique ai party at openai’s old headquarters in san francisco.

at 8:30 p.m., the music written and generated by ai in real time stopped playing. surrounded by bodyguards, musk stood on a table and spoke to the attendees:

we want to create a super ai that is as benign as possible.

using this quote as an introduction, musk talked about why he founded xai and moved it to the same office where he helped found openai nearly a decade ago.

in 2015, musk co-founded openai with openai ceo sam altman and a group of like-minded partners, but he quit the board of directors just three years later.

although the reason he gave at the time was that tesla was focused on artificial intelligence and believed that his company and openai might have conflicts in the future, he overturned this statement and claimed that the reason for the breakup was due to ideological differences. in 2023, musk at one point, openai was brought to court with a complaint on the grounds that it violated its non-profit mission. however, according to the exposed emails, musk was trying to gain control of openai, including asking for the ceo position and majority ownership. , chose to leave after failure.

the next thing will be much simpler. since managing openai failed, then build one yourself.

in march 2023, xai was born on the tenth floor of the social media platform subsequently, researchers from openai, microsoft and meta were recruited, with the aim of surpassing openai within three months and providing a competitive large language model.

since then, musk has transformed from a partner to a new challenger in the ai ​​market. it is obviously not an easy task to compete with companies such as openai.

under external competition and internal pressure, xai's first model, grok, was launched at the end of 2023. this is a chat ai for paying users of x. however, grok's core functions currently rely on external technologies, such as relying on microsoft for search bing relies on meta's open source llama model for query rewriting.

such dependence brings uncontrollable risks. for example, more than a month ago, xai reached an agreement with black forest labs to provide support for image generation, but because this function lacks the protection measures set by other image generators , people can randomly spawn taylor swift in lingerie and kamala harris with a gun.

in response to this, musk responded on x that cooperation with external technologies will help xai advance its own research and development in grok faster.

a person familiar with xai's work said that in addition to its current functions, xai is also developing voice and search functions. just like openai and meta's voice modes, grok can also talk to people and provide news on x story summaries and trending topics.

if you want to develop faster, talent is the key.

so, when openai ceo sam altman had just delivered a speech to a crowd of developers a few hours ago, musk came to poach him:

join xai and help build a useful ai.

however, ai talents are in hot demand in this world, and the best developers can easily earn millions of dollars. to attract these people, you need targeted recruitment in addition to compensation.

for example, many of them have an altruistic vision for the future of ai. they hope that the ai ​​they participate in creating can help the world become better in some way, rather than simply being a profit-making tool.

musk took a fancy to this, so he tried his best to cater to the altruistic psychology of these developers in this party, and also stepped on openai:

chatgpt is a closed, profit-maximizing ai, so i can't trust them. ai should not be controlled by companies like openai or google, who always keep their best models secret. xai will change this: ai models belong to xai, but will be shared with the world.

after satisfying idealistic developers, musk is unwilling to give up on pragmatic developers. apart from these illusory things, xai does have its own attraction: walking fast in small steps.

compared with larger competitors like openai, the advantages at xai are clear: smaller teams and shorter development cycles allow xai to move faster and innovate quickly.

this flexible work environment means developers can more freely implement their ideas rather than being tied down by cumbersome approval processes. the rapid iteration rhythm also allows developers to see their results faster, attracting those who are eager to see the rapid development of ai, and giving them a greater sense of accomplishment and control.

with a two-pronged approach, musk's "party" has become a carefully prepared recruitment conference, and it is also xai's arms race in the face of the increasingly fierce ai market.

at this time, openai continues to promote cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology and ensure its dominance with its large language model and a new round of us$6.6 billion in financing; google uses its powerful computing resources and deep technical foundation to focus on developing more powerful ai models are the first to be implemented on personal terminals; while anthropic takes safety and reliability as its core and is committed to building ai systems that are more friendly to humans.

the three companies compete fiercely for r&d, talent, and computing resources, vying for leadership in the ai ​​field.

musk’s expectations for xai are no more than this. like spacex in the rocket field, xai will also dominate the ai ​​field. he is quite optimistic that in the next five years, openai, anthropic, google and xai will be the dominant players. the main players in this competition.

this is not arrogance. in may of this year, xai received 6 billion from several well-known investors such as andreessen horowitz, lightspeed venture partners, and sequoia capital. us dollars in financing, the company's valuation reached us$24 billion.

and there is news that openai ceo sam altman is on a global mission to meet with uae leaders, asian chip manufacturers and us officials to raise $7 trillion for 36 semiconductor factories and data centers. it aims to promote openai's research and development of ai. after the latest round of financing, altman directly asked these supporters not to invest in competitors like xai to prevent stronger competitors from threatening themselves. this can be regarded as a side confirmation of xai's potential. .

at the end of this party, which was both a job fair and a declaration of war, musk made no secret of his ambitions and strategies. he compared xai to a supersonic jet aircraft company and the sr-71 blackbird reconnaissance aircraft during the cold war. :

the sr-71 blackbird has never been shot down because it has only one strategy: to accelerate, and use constant acceleration to solve all troubles.

using sr-71 as an example is indeed very clever. what xai needs now is to keep accelerating and accelerating in order to hope to catch up with the three giants and get a foothold in the three-legged pattern.

however, it should be noted that although the sr-71 blackbird reconnaissance aircraft used the most powerful technology at the time, it still leaked oil when taxiing. only when accelerating to cruising speed can the expansion of the metal seal all leakage points and solve the problem of oil leakage.

that is to say,once something goes wrong with the sr-71, the only thing it can kill is its own pilots, not the enemy's vital forces.

at ten o'clock in the evening, all participants left the scene. the ai ​​party came to an end in the dark night, but the head-to-head confrontation in the ai ​​field was beginning.