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Hey everybody, welcome back to 
the Elon Musk Podcast. 

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This is a show where we discuss 
the critical crossroads, The 

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Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The 
Boring Company, and Neurolink. 

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I'm your host Will Walden, Elon 
Musk's AI company XAI has 

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released Grok 2.5 Urban Open 
Source License, raising one 

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question what exactly does Elon 
Musk gain from giving away his 

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code? 
This makes XAI the first major 

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U.S. company to open source, a 
flagship conversational model 

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while it's still considering 
competitive and it directly 

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challenges the closed source 
strategies of other companies 

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like Open AI, Anthropic and 
Google DeepMind. 

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Musk framed the decision as a 
philosophical one about 

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transparency, but the decision 
also positions XAI to expand its

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influence without outspending 
its rivals and user acquisition 

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or cloud infrastructure. 
Now. 

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XAI published the weights and 
architecture for Grok 2.5 Friday

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night, uploading them to a 
public GitHub repository under 

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the Apache 2 Point O license. 
A license allows anyone to use, 

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modify, or build on Grok 2.5, 
including for commercial 

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purposes, without paying XAI 
anything or attributing anything

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to XAI. 
Now this immediately makes Grok 

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2.5 one of the most permissively
licensed large language models 

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ever released at this scale. 
The model comes in two sizes, a 

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314 billion parameter version 
trained with mixture of experts 

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techniques and a smaller dense 
version with 25 billion 

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parameters. 
Both are trained on publicly 

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available and licensed data 
sources, according to X AI and 

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Elon Musk described the release 
as a commitment to openness and 

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said it aligns with XA is 
broader mission to develop AI 

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that benefits all of humanity. 
He previously criticized Sam 

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Altman and Open AI for switching
to a closed source model after 

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becoming a for profit company in
March. 

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XAI open source Croc 1, though 
that model lagged way behind 

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current commercial systems, Croc
2.5 narrows that gap 

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considerably. 
According to internal 

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evaluations, Croc 2.5 ranks 
close to GPT 4 on several 

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benchmarks, including MMLU, 
which is massive multitask 

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language understanding and Human
Evil, a programming test 

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commonly used to measure LLM 
coding capabilities. 

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So releasing Grok 2.5 under 
Apache 2 Point O immediately 

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places pressure on Sam Altman 
and Open AI in Anthropic, who 

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have argued that safety risks 
justify keeping their most 

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capable models closed. 
Musk has openly dismissed that 

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rationale, claiming that 
companies are using safety as an

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excuse to maintain control over 
their code base and their user 

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base. 
Now by Elon open sourcing Grok 

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2.5 X AI makes it easier for 
startups, researchers and other 

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companies to train on a strong 
base model without building from

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scratch. 
The trade off Less control for 

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broader adoption mirrors what 
Meta has done with Llama two and

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three. 
Though Meta still uses a non 

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commercial license, the release 
also serves A practical purpose.

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Grok runs inside X, where it 
appears the chatbot for premium 

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Subs. 
Making Grok 2.5 open source 

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gives Musk access to a global 
pool of developers who can test,

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improve, and adapt the system 
without being on XA is payroll. 

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Now. 
That outsourcing effect has 

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already benefited Llama Meta's 
ecosystem, and Musk appears to 

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be betting that it can be done 
with Grok as well. 

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XAI has stated that future 
versions, including Grok 3, may 

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not be open source, suggesting 
that Grok 2.5 may serve as the 

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platform's long term public 
version while development 

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continues behind the scenes on 
other models. 

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Now, Musk has also said the Grok
2.5 has been trained to be 

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maximally truthful, quality that
remains difficult to measure. 

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XAI claims that Grok now 
outperforms Claude 2.1, Gemini 

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1.5, and GPT 4 in some 
conversational tasks, though 

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external benchmarks vary on 
that. 

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Grok 2.5 is not connected to 
Real Time Search or X's live 

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data feed, though that's unlike 
the private chat bot used by X 

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users. 
That means developers using the 

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open source Grok will not have 
access to Musk's internal data 

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pipelines, which remain a 
competitive asset unique to the 

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version of Grok embedded within 
X. 

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And open sourcing Grok 2.5 also 
gives XAI a way to compete with 

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Big Tech without relying on 
partnerships. 

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Unlike Anthropic, which has tied
itself closely to Amazon, or 

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Open AI, which remains linked to
Microsoft, XAI operates as an 

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independent entity that would 
benefits from its access to X's 

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user data in its upcoming 
integration with Tesla's 

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interface hardware. 
Now, the open source model 

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allows XAI to sidestep capital 
constraints by letting external 

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users do much of the refinement 
and experimentation that would 

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otherwise require dedicated in 
house teams. 

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I want to know if you're on your
podcast platform right now. 

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If you have comments, leave a 
comment. 

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Would you use grok at home? 
Would you be able to mix it 

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yourself? 
Would you download it from 

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GitHub and be able to use it? 
Let me know. 

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Let me know what what comes of 
this. 

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So let's get back into Grok. 
Though the 2.5 version mixture 

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of Experts architecture divides 
the model into separate 

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subnetworks, only a portion of 
which activate at any given 

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time, this design improves 
efficiency and reduces training 

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costs, especially when deployed 
at scale. 

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It also means that developers 
who download Grok 2.5 will need 

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infrastructure capable of 
handling that complexity. 

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That may limit adoption among 
individual users or small teams,

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but larger labs and cloud based 
EI platforms can run the model 

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with relative ease and for free.
Releasing such a large scale 

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open source model at this time 
sends a huge signal to the 

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industry. 
XAI is betting on diffusion over

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exclusivity. 
By removing licensing friction, 

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it creates a channel for grok 
based variance to proliferate 

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across research labs, startups 
and independent projects. 

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Musk appears to believe that 
wide availability will help 

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create loyalty and technical 
entrenchment, even if it's 

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limits of the company ability to
monetize Grok directly and make 

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money from every user. 
The decision also reinforces 

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Musk's public feud with Open AI 
and Sam Altman. 

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He Co founded the company in 
2015, then left in 2018 after 

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internal disagreements. 
Since then, Musk has attacked 

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Open AI repeatedly, suing it 
earlier this year and accusing 

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CEO Sam Altman of betraying its 
founding principles. 

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XA is release of Croc 2.5 under 
a fully open license marks a 

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clear ideological split from the
commercial closed source path 

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that Open AI has taken since its
partnership with Microsoft, and 

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Croc 2.5 is now freely available
to download on GitHub. 

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You can go do it right now. 
They have install instructions 

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and model weights posted 
alongside this license. 

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Any developer can fine tune it 
for their own applications. 

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You can use it for whatever you 
want to use it for and they have

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no say over what you do with it.
Download the code, you can do 

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whatever you want to with it 
now. 

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You can integrate it into custom
pipelines or study its 

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architecture for academic 
purposes. 

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You can make a for profit 
company using Grok. 

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XAI has not imposed any 
restrictions on use beyond what 

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is standard under Apache 2 Point
O, which includes liability 

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disclaimers. 
But there's no functional 

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limitations on you. 
You can just go wild and build 

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whatever you want to build. 
They're planning a flag right 

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now in a part of the EI space 
that remains divided between 

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access and control. 
The release turns Grok into a 

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public tool now that does 
something you get on X or in 

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your Tesla. 
It's not just a product anymore.

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This is for everybody. 
And Musk claimed this earlier 

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this year that he was going to 
release Grok open source and 

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everybody would be able to use 
it. 

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Now, like we said before, the 
next version of Grok will be 

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closed source. 
They're planning on using Grok 

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2.5 for testing and so they can 
have something available for 

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people to use and when they 
upgrade from the next version of

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Grok to two versions after or 
even a version after, we might 

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see that on GitHub as well. 
I'm an open source proponent. 

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I've used it for thousands of 
development jobs in the past and

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still doing that now. 
So I think this is a great move 

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by X AI. 
Let me know what you think in 

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the comments and I'll see you in
the next one. 

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Hey, thank you so much for 
listening today. 

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I really do appreciate your 
support. 

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If you could take a second and 
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It helps out the show 
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miss an episode. 
And each episode is about 10 

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minutes or less to get you 
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to patreon.com/stagezero and 
please take care of yourselves 

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and each other and I'll see you 
tomorrow.