Large language model maker xAI could launch its open-source repository to rival the online collaboratively edited encyclopedia Wikipedia within October, CEO Elon Musk said.
The entrepreneur announced on social platform X on Sunday that the early beta version of Grokipedia will be released in two weeks. He described it as a “necessary step toward xAI’s goal of understanding the universe.”
According to Musk, the new platform, powered by his company xAI, will be “a massive improvement over Wikipedia.” The early beta, which Musk referred to as “version 0.1,” is expected to go live before the end of October.
In a post on X late September, Musk encouraged users to join xAI in building Grokipedia, promising it would be freely accessible to the public without restrictions on use.
xAI to launch Grok-powered online encyclopedia soon
According to xAI, Grokipedia will use the company’s large language model Grok to analyze existing online sources, including Wikipedia articles, and assess their factual accuracy. The model reportedly uses massive inference compute to evaluate if statements are true, partially true, false, or missing key context.
The AI system then rewrites pages to remove inaccuracies, correct half-truths, and add missing information. A statement written by a tech enthusiast on XM, supported by Musk, stated this process will create a “true knowledge source” repository that solely presents facts “free from bias or hidden agendas.”
Tesla’s head first announced Grokipedia when several conservatives complained about Wikipedia’s editorial practices and perceived political slant. Some public figures and commentators on X have accused the platform of editing its system to disproportionately empower administrators with certain ideological leanings, mostly liberal.
One user wrote that Wikipedia editors and administrators hold “the power to deprecate right-wing sources” and blacklist dissenting viewpoints.
“Wikipedia skews the scale of balance, leading to the information being an inaccurate representation of reality, ridden with Left bias,” they wrote.
White House AI and Crypto Czar Investor David Sacks supported the sentiment, calling Wikipedia “hopelessly biased.” He claimed that “an army of left-wing activists” keeps biographical entries but “fights reasonable corrections.”
“Wikipedia often appears first in Google search results, and now it’s a trusted source for AI model training. This is a huge problem,” Sacks surmised.
The online encyclopedia’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, also criticized the platform’s direction in an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on September 29.
Sanger said Wikipedia is dominated by a small group of administrators who suppress ideological diversity.
“Over the years, conservatives were just pushed out,” Sanger told Carlson. “There is a whole army of admins constantly blocking people who have ideological disagreements. If someone becomes a problem for them, they are simply gotten rid of on a pretense.”
xAI lands a US government deal, discussed in the Pentagon
Last Thursday, Musk’s xAI signed a contract with the US government that will allow federal agencies to use its Grok chatbot. The agreement, made through the General Services Administration that manages federal procurement, permits agencies to access Grok for a nominal fee of just 42 cents over an 18-month period.
Under the deal, xAI engineers will assist government departments with implementing the chatbot across several operations. Elon said the partnership was part of a broader effort to “rapidly deploy AI throughout the government for the benefit of the country.”
xAI is attempting to catch up with OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which secured similar government contracts earlier this year. While OpenAI and Anthropic charge $1 for comparable chatbot access, Musk’s company is asking for 42 cents, a recurring number in his ventures that references “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” in which 42 is the answer to “the meaning of life.”
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/elon-musks-grokipedia-will-be-out-in-2-weeks/
