Friday, August 1, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

Musk launches Grok 4 – takes the lead as world’s strongest AI model

The future of AI

Published 10 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Elon Musk speaks during the press conference alongside developers from xAI.
3 minute read

Elon Musk’s AI company xAI presented its latest AI model Grok 4 on Wednesday, along with a monthly fee of $300 for access to the premium version. The launch comes amid a turbulent period for Musk’s companies, as X CEO Linda Yaccarino has left her position and the Grok system, which lacks politically correct safeguards, has made controversial comments.

xAI took the step into the next generation on Wednesday evening with Grok 4, the company’s most advanced AI model to date. At the same time, a premium service called SuperGrok Heavy was introduced with a monthly fee of $300 – the most expensive AI subscription among major providers in the market.

Grok 4 is positioned as xAI’s direct competitor to established AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The model can analyze images and answer complex questions, and has been increasingly integrated into Musk’s social network X over recent months, where xAI recently acquired significant ownership stakes.

Musk: “Better than PhD level”

During a livestream on Wednesday evening, Musk made bold claims about the new model’s capabilities.

“With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions”, Musk claimed. However, he acknowledged that the model can sometimes lack common sense and has not yet invented new technologies or discovered new physics – “but that is just a matter of time”.

Expectations for Grok 4 are high ahead of the upcoming competition with OpenAI’s anticipated GPT-5, which is expected to launch later this summer.

Launch during turbulent week

The launch comes during a tumultuous period for Musk’s business empire. Earlier on Wednesday, Linda Yaccarino announced that she is leaving her position as CEO of X after approximately two years in the role. No successor has yet been appointed.

Yaccarino’s departure comes just days after Grok’s official, automated X account made controversial comments criticizing Hollywood’s “Jewish executives” and other politically incorrect statements. xAI was forced to temporarily restrict the account’s activity and delete the posts. In response to the incident, xAI appears to have removed a recently added section from Grok’s public system instructions that encouraged the AI not to shy away from “politically incorrect” statements.

Musk wore his customary leather jacket and sat alongside xAI leaders during the Grok 4 launch. Photo: xAI

Two model versions with top performance

xAI launched two variants: Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy – the latter described as the company’s “multi-agent version” with improved performance. According to Musk, Grok 4 Heavy creates multiple AI agents that work simultaneously on a problem and then compare their results “like a study group” to find the best answer.

The company claims that Grok 4 demonstrates top performance across several test areas, including “Humanity’s Last Exam” – a demanding test that measures AI’s ability to answer thousands of questions in mathematics, humanities, and natural sciences. According to xAI, Grok 4 achieved a score of 25.4 percent without “tools,” surpassing Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro (21.6 percent) and OpenAI’s o3 high (21 percent).

With access to tools, Grok 4 Heavy allegedly achieved 44.4 percent, compared to Gemini 2.5 Pro’s 26.9 percent.

Future products on the way

SuperGrok Heavy subscribers get early access to Grok 4 Heavy as well as upcoming features. xAI announced that the company plans to launch an AI coding model in August, a multimodal agent in September, and a video generation model in October.

The company is also making Grok 4 available through its API to attract developers to build applications with the model, despite the enterprise initiative being only two months old.

Whether companies are ready to adopt Grok despite the recent mishap remains to be seen, as xAI attempts to establish itself as a credible competitor to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in the enterprise market.

The Grok service can now be accessed outside the X platform through Grok.com.

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Samsung and Tesla sign billion-dollar deal for AI chip manufacturing

The future of AI

Published yesterday 9:22
– By Editorial Staff
Image of the construction of Samsung's large chip factory in Taylor, located in Texas, USA.
2 minute read

South Korean tech giant Samsung has entered into a comprehensive agreement with Tesla to manufacture next-generation AI chips. The contract, which extends until 2033, is worth $16.5 billion and means Samsung will dedicate its new Texas-based factory to producing Tesla’s AI6 chips.

Samsung receives a significant boost for its semiconductor manufacturing through the new partnership with Tesla. The electric vehicle manufacturer has chosen to place production of its advanced AI6 chips at Samsung’s facility in Texas, in a move that could change competitive dynamics within the semiconductor industry, writes TechCrunch.

The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate, wrote Tesla founder Elon Musk on X when the deal was announced.

The agreement represents an important milestone for Samsung, which has previously struggled to attract and retain major customers for its chip manufacturing. According to Musk, Tesla may end up spending significantly more than the original $16.5 billion on Samsung chips.

Actual output is likely to be several times higher, he explained in a later post.

Tesla’s chip strategy takes shape

The AI6 chips form the core of Tesla’s ambition to evolve from car manufacturer to an AI and robotics company. The new generation chip is designed as an all-around solution that can be used both for the company’s Full Self-Driving system and for the humanoid robots of the Optimus model that Tesla is developing, as well as for high-performance AI training in data centers.

Tesla is working in parallel with Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC for production of AI5 chips, whose design was recently completed. These will initially be manufactured at TSMC’s facility in Taiwan and later also in Arizona. Samsung already produces Tesla’s AI4 chips.

Since 2019, Tesla has developed its own custom chips after leaving Nvidia’s Drive platform. The first self-developed chipset, known as FSD Computer or Hardware 3, was launched the same year and installed in all of the company’s electric vehicles.

Musk promises personal involvement

In an unusual turn, Samsung has agreed to let Tesla assist in maximizing manufacturing efficiency at the Texas factory. Musk has promised personal presence to accelerate progress.

This is a critical point, as I will walk the line personally to accelerate the pace of progress. And the fab is conveniently located not far from my house, he wrote.

The strategic partnership could give Samsung the stable customer volume the company needs to compete with industry leader TSMC, while Tesla secures access to advanced chip manufacturing for its growing AI ambitions.

Artists flee Spotify after Ek’s defense investment

The future of AI

Published 30 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
1 minute read

Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s investment in the German defense company Helsing is now prompting several international artists to leave the music streaming service in protest. The Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is the latest name to remove their music from the platform.

Daniel Ek, who is also chairman of the board at Helsing, led an investment of €600 million earlier this year in the German company that specializes in AI-driven autonomous combat solutions. The technology is used for drones and underwater surveillance systems, among other applications.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard announced the decision on Instagram with the words “Fuck Spotify”, explaining that their latest demo recordings will only be available on Bandcamp.

“Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in Al military drone technology. We just removed our music from the platform”, the band wrote.

The California-based band Xiu Xiu and San Francisco group Deerhoof have made the same choice. Deerhoof expressed their position clearly: “We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech”.

The protest reflects the music industry’s long-standing ambivalence toward Spotify’s dominant position and impact on artists.

Proton launches privacy-focused AI assistant to compete with ChatGPT

The future of AI

Published 26 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The AI assistant Lumo neither stores nor trains on users' conversations and can be used freely without login.
2 minute read

Proton challenges ChatGPT with its new AI assistant Lumo, which promises to never store or train on users’ conversations. The service launches with end-to-end encryption and stricter privacy protections than competing AI services.

The Swiss company Proton, known for its secure email services and VPN solutions, is now expanding into artificial intelligence with the launch of AI assistant Lumo. Unlike established competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, Proton markets its service with promises to never log, store or train its models on users’ questions or conversations.

Lumo can, just like other AI assistants, help users with everyday tasks such as rephrasing emails, summarizing documents and reviewing code. The major difference lies in privacy protection – all chats are end-to-end encrypted and not stored on Proton’s servers.

Privacy-focused alternative in the AI jungle

Proton’s strategy differs markedly from industry standards. ChatGPT stores conversations for 30 days for security reasons, even when chat history is turned off. Gemini may retain user queries for up to 72 hours, while Claude saves chats for up to a month, or longer if they are flagged for review.

An additional advantage for Proton is the company’s Swiss base, which means stricter privacy laws compared to American competitors who may be forced to hand over user data to authorities.

The company has not confirmed which models are used, but Lumo likely builds on smaller, community-developed systems rather than the massive, privately trained models that power services like ChatGPT. This may mean that responses become less detailed or nuanced.

Three service tiers

Lumo is available via the web as well as through apps for iOS and Android. The service is offered in three tiers: two free options and a paid version.

Guest users can ask a limited number of questions per week without an account, but chat history is not saved. Users with free Proton accounts automatically get access to Lumo Free, which includes basic encrypted chat history and support for smaller file uploads.

The paid version Lumo Plus costs approximately $12.99 per month ($9.99 with annual billing) and offers unlimited chats, longer chat history and support for larger file uploads. The price undercuts competitors – ChatGPT Plus, Gemini Advanced and Claude Pro all cost around $20 monthly.

The question that remains to be answered is how well Lumo will compete with models trained on significantly larger datasets. The most advanced AI assistants are powered by enormous amounts of user data, which helps them learn patterns and understand nuances for continuous improvement over time. Proton’s more limited, privacy-centered strategy may affect performance.

Pentagon purchases Musk’s politically incorrect AI models

The future of AI

Published 15 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
1 minute read

Despite the deep rift with Trump, Elon Musk is now receiving a contract with the Pentagon worth up to $200 million to deliver specially adapted language models for the US military.

The project is called “Grok for Government” in a statement on X, by X.

Grok’s new AI model has been a major topic of conversation this past week, in establishment media primarily because after an update where certain filters were removed, it began breaking strongly against politically correct patterns, and among the general public due to the humor perceived in this.

Among other things, it has been noted how the chatbot writes that certain Jewish organizations, particularly the far-right group ADL, pursue a hostile line against European ethnic groups. For this, the chatbot has been accused of “antisemitism”.

American media analyst and political commentator Mark Dice on the controversy surrounding Grok’s new versions.

However, the criticism has apparently not prevented the US military from procuring Grok solutions for their purposes.

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