The checklist of flagship AI fashions that missed their promised launch home windows continues to develop.
Last summer time, billionaire Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of AI firm xAI, mentioned that Grok 3, xAI’s subsequent main AI mannequin, would arrive by “finish of 12 months” 2024. Grok, xAI’s reply to fashions like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini, can analyze photographs and reply to questions, and powers a lot of options on X, Musk’s social community.
“Grok 3 finish of 12 months after coaching on 100k H100s ought to be actually one thing particular,” Musk wrote in a July put up on X, referring to xAI’s huge Memphis-based cluster of GPUs. “Grok 3 will probably be a significant leap ahead,” he mentioned in a mid-December follow-up put up.
Yet it’s January 2, and Grok 3 hasn’t arrived — nor are there indicators its rollout is imminent.
In reality, some code on xAI’s web site noticed by AI tipster Tibor Blaho means that an intermediate mannequin, “Grok 2.5,” could land first.
Grok[.]com is probably coming quickly with Grok 2.5 mannequin (grok-2-latest – “Our most clever mannequin”) – thanks for the trace, anon! pic.twitter.com/emsvmZyaf7
— Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) December 20, 2024
Granted, this isn’t the primary time Musk has set a lofty objective and missed it. It’s well-established that Musk’s pronouncements in regards to the timing of product launches are sometimes unrealistic at finest.
And to be truthful, in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman in August, Musk mentioned that Grok 3 would “hopefully” be accessible in 2024 “if we’re fortunate.”
But Grok 3’s MIA standing is fascinating as a result of it’s a part of a rising development.
Last 12 months, AI startup Anthropic did not ship a successor to its top-of-the-line Claude 3 Opus mannequin. Months after saying {that a} next-gen mannequin, Claude 3.5 Opus, would by launched by the tip of 2024, Anthropic scrapped all point out of the mannequin from its developer documentation. (According to 1 report, Anthropic did end coaching Claude 3.5 Opus someday final 12 months, however determined that releasing it didn’t make financial sense.)
Reportedly, Google and OpenAI have additionally suffered setbacks with their flagship fashions in latest months.
To blame for all this, largely, are the boundaries of present AI scaling legal guidelines — the strategies firms are utilizing to extend the capabilities of their fashions. In the not-too-distant previous, it was potential to realize substantial efficiency boosts by coaching fashions utilizing large quantities of computing energy and bigger and bigger information units. But the positive factors with every era of mannequin have begun to shrink, main firms to pursue different methods.
Musk himself alluded to this within the Fridman interview.
“You’re hoping for [Grok 3] to be state-of-the-art?” Fridman requested. “Hopefully,” Musk replied. “I imply, that is the objective. We could fail at this objective. That’s the aspiration.”
There may very well be different causes for Grok 3’s delay. xAI has a a lot smaller staff than a lot of its rivals, for one. Nonetheless, the slipped launch timeframe provides to the physique of proof that standard AI coaching approaches are operating up towards a wall.
