Elon Musk announced that the development of Grok 3, intended as a competitor to OpenAI and ChatGPT, has entered its final stage and is expected to become available within one to two weeks.
Grok 3 and competition in the AI market
Speaking via video call at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk said that Grok 3 has outstanding reasoning capabilities and, based on tests so far, outperforms every known AI model currently available. “That is an encouraging sign,” he said.
The conflict between Musk and OpenAI
The billionaire businessman founded xAI as an alternative to the AI developments of OpenAI and Google. He was himself a co-founder of OpenAI, but has since repeatedly criticised its business strategy. On Monday, as head of an investor group, Musk made a 97.4 billion dollar offer to buy OpenAI’s non-profit assets, further intensifying the rivalry in the artificial intelligence sector.
OpenAI aims to become a fully for-profit organisation in order to secure the capital needed to develop the most advanced AI models. Musk, however, has sued OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other executives, asking a US court to block the company’s transformation. This week OpenAI responded to Musk’s offer, stating that it contradicts his own legal efforts. According to Musk, the organisation has so far operated under a dual non-profit and for-profit model, and eliminating the non-profit part entirely would go too far.
Economic and political positions
At the conference, Musk also touched on economic issues, stressing that US government spending could be cut by as much as a trillion dollars. In his view, if the economy grew by 4–5% a year while government spending was reduced by 3–4% of GDP, inflation would disappear between 2025 and 2026.
During the conversation, Omar Al Olama, the UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, announced that they are working on a high-speed underground transport system called the “Dubai Loop”. Musk compared it to a “wormhole”, but did not reveal further details about the project.
On international politics, Musk argued that the United States interferes too much in the internal affairs of other countries. “Let’s let other countries take care of their own business,” he said. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s statement that the United States would take control of the Gaza Strip, relocate the Palestinian population and turn the area into the “Riviera” of the Middle East caused great outrage in the Arab world.