Elon Musk’s ‘Scary Smart’ Grok 3 Release—What You Need To Know xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, is set to launch Grok 3 on Monday, Feb. 17. According to xAI, this latest version of its chatbot, which Musk describes as “scary smart,” represents a major step forward, improving reasoning, computational power and adaptability. xAI reports that Grok 3’s development was accelerated by its Colossus supercomputer, which was built in just eight months. The system, powered by 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, provided 200 million GPU-hours for training—ten times more than its predecessor, Grok 2. This significant boost in computational resources has helped Grok 3 process large datasets more efficiently, reducing training times and improving accuracy. Beyond increased computing power, xAI has adjusted its training approach to improve Grok 3’s capabilities. The model now incorporates synthetic datasets, self-correction mechanisms and reinforcement learning to enhance its performance: Synthetic Datasets – These are artificially generated datasets rather than collected from real-world sources. They are used to train AI models by simulating various scenarios, ensuring a diverse and controlled dataset. This helps improve learning efficiency and address data privacy concerns. Self-Correction Mechanisms – These are AI techniques that allow a model to identify and correct its own mistakes. By evaluating its outputs and comparing them with known correct responses, the model can refine its answers over time, reducing errors and improving accuracy. Reinforcement Learning – A type of machine learning where an AI model learns by receiving rewards or penalties for its actions. The system is trained to maximize positive outcomes through trial and error, improving its decision-making capabilities. According to xAI and Musk, these improvements will reduce incorrect responses—known as hallucinations—by using multiple validation steps, improve logical accuracy by checking information against reliable sources, and adapt more effectively through continuous self-evaluation and learning. xAI also reports that human feedback loops and contextual training have been introduced to ensure more natural and accurate responses.
Reward models of RL are known to be gamed. As an example, Musk himself is changing Grok's responses to be more favoriable to his mythical narrative.