Friday, August 29, 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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AI bots becoming Swedes’ psychologists

The future of AI

Published 15 August 2025
– By Editorial Staff
AI chatbots' advice isn't necessarily bad - but often very impersonal and generic.
2 minute read

Instead of turning to professional therapists and seeking human contact, many Swedes have now begun seeking support and guidance from AI tools.

Psychologists simultaneously see serious risks with the development of treating the new technology as a substitute for therapy.

The trend is growing rapidly. When influencer and mental coach Alexandra Bylund shared a private text message conversation with her partner and asked ChatGPT for an assessment, the result was decisive.

“The answer? You could say it was clear. Raw. True… And it was the beginning of the end”, Bylund wrote afterward on Instagram about her divorce decision.

Her followers’ response was overwhelmingly positive. Bylund and her followers are also far from alone in viewing AI chatbots as conversation partners and guides that help them make important life decisions.

— People say it’s their best friend and best advisor, notes SVT (Swedish public television) reporter Alice Uhlin.

“Who is the sender?”

Psychologist Maria Farm sees the phenomenon as a logical consequence of societal development, despite it potentially seeming impersonal to discuss emotional life with an algorithm – but also emphasizes obvious dangers with the development.

— Who is the sender, is the first thing I think. It’s not a person who has intentions, and there can be ethical problems with that, she believes.

She points out that the advice isn’t necessarily bad, but often impersonal, general and anonymous.

— Several are good pieces of advice and I could absolutely give them myself, she admits at the same time.

“Doesn’t replace psychologists”

The effects of “AI therapy” is a largely unexplored area, and it’s highly unclear what impact the widespread use of chatbots actually has on users’ mental health.

Despite AI tools’ ability to often provide useful advice, Maria Farm emphasizes that the technology can never practically replace human professional help.

— It doesn’t replace psychotherapists and psychologists, she states firmly.

There have already been reported several cases where extremely vulnerable users have taken their own lives after relying too heavily on AI bots’ advice, which according to assessors underscores the need for caution.

OpenAI launches GPT-5 – Here are the new features in the latest ChatGPT model

The future of AI

Published 8 August 2025
– By Editorial Staff
"GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert", claims CEO Sam Altman during the company's presentation of the new model.
2 minute read

OpenAI released its new flagship model GPT-5 on Thursday, which is now available free of charge to all users of the ChatGPT chatbot service. The American AI giant claims that the new model is “the best in the world” and takes a significant step toward developing artificial intelligence that can perform better than humans in most economically valuable work tasks.

GPT-5 differs from previous versions by combining fast responses with advanced problem-solving capabilities. While previous AI chatbots could primarily provide smart answers to questions, GPT-5 can perform complex tasks for users – such as creating software applications, navigating calendars, or compiling research reports, writes TechCrunch.

— Having something like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable at any previous time in history, said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a press conference.

Better than competitors

According to OpenAI, GPT-5 performs somewhat better than competing AI models from companies like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Elon Musk’s xAI on several important tests. In programming, the model achieves 74.9 percent on real coding tasks, which marginally beats Anthropic’s latest model Claude Opus 4.1, which reached 74.5 percent.

A particularly important improvement is that GPT-5 “hallucinates” – that is, makes up incorrect information – significantly less than previous models. When tested on health-related questions, the model gives incorrect answers only 1.6 percent of the time, compared to over 12 percent for OpenAI’s previous models.

This is particularly relevant since millions of people use AI chatbots to get health advice, despite them not replacing professional doctors.

New features and pricing models

The company has also simplified the user experience. Instead of users having to choose the right settings, GPT-5 has an automatic router that determines how it should best respond – either quickly or by “thinking through” the answer more thoroughly.

ChatGPT also gets four new personalities that users can choose between: Cynic, Robot, Listener, and Nerd. These customize how the model responds without users needing to specify it in each request.

For developers, GPT-5 is launched in three sizes via OpenAI’s programming interface, with the base model priced at €1.15 per million input words and €9.20 per million generated words.

The launch comes after an intense week for OpenAI, which also released an open AI model that developers can download for free. ChatGPT has grown to become one of the world’s most popular consumer products with over 700 million users every week – nearly 10 percent of the world’s population.

OpenAI opens data center in Norway

The future of AI

Published 3 August 2025
– By Editorial Staff
In Norway, OpenAI is planning to establish one of Europe's largest AI data centers as part of the global Stargate project.
2 minute read

In Norway, OpenAI plans to establish one of Europe’s largest AI data centers as part of the global Stargate project. The facility will be built in the northern parts of the country and operated entirely on renewable energy.

Stargate was launched earlier this year as a comprehensive AI initiative with the goal of strengthening the US dominance in artificial intelligence. The project is a collaboration between American OpenAI and Oracle, along with Japanese SoftBank, with the ambition to build a global AI infrastructure at a cost of up to $500 billion over the next four years. This makes Stargate one of the largest technology investments in history.

First in Europe

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that the company plans to open a Stargate-branded data center in Norway. It will be the company’s first European facility of this kind.

The data center will be located in Kvandal, outside Narvik in northern Norway, and built in collaboration with British company Nscale and Norwegian Aker. OpenAI will function as a so-called “off-taker”, meaning the company will purchase capacity from the facility to power its AI services.

Part of the purpose of this project is to partner with OpenAI and leverage European sovereign compute to release additional services and features to the European continent, says Josh Payne, CEO of Nscale, in an interview with CNBC.

Powered by hydroelectric energy

The data center, planned to be completed in 2026, will house up to 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs and have a capacity of 230 megawatts – making it one of the largest AI facilities in Europe. The facility will be operated entirely on so-called “green energy”, made possible by the region’s access to hydroelectric power.

The first phase of the project involves an investment of approximately $2 billion. Nscale and Aker have committed to contributing $1 billion each. The initial capacity is estimated at 20 megawatts, with ambitions to expand significantly in the coming years.

Zuckerberg: Skipping AI glasses puts you at a “cognitive disadvantage”

The future of AI

Published 1 August 2025
– By Editorial Staff
"The ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, and talk to you", believes the Meta CEO.
2 minute read

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warns that people without AI glasses will find themselves at a significant mental “disadvantage” in the future. During the company’s quarterly report, he shared his vision of glasses as the primary way to interact with artificial intelligence.

On Thursday, Meta released its quarterly report. In a call directed at investors, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the company’s investment in smart glasses and warned about the consequences of staying outside this development, reports TechCrunch.

I continue to think that glasses are basically going to be the ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, and talk to you, Zuckerberg said during the investor call.

By adding screens, even more value can be unlocked, he argued, whether it involves holographic fields of vision or smaller displays in everyday AI glasses.

I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI – or some way to interact with AI – I think you’re … probably going to be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people, he added.

Unexpected success

Meta has focused on “smart” glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta models. The glasses allow users to listen to music, take photos and ask questions to Meta AI. The products have become a surprising success – revenue from Ray-Ban Meta glasses more than tripled compared to the previous year.

However, the Reality Labs division has been costly. Meta reported $4,53 billion in operating losses for the second quarter, and since 2020, the unit has lost nearly $70 billion.

Competition is growing. OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s startup company this spring for $6.5 billion to develop AI devices, while other companies are exploring AI brooches and pendants.

However, Zuckerberg is convinced about the future of glasses and connects them to the Metaverse vision.

The other thing that’s awesome about glasses is they are going to be the ideal way to blend the physical and digital worlds together, he concluded.

Meta has previously been known for contributing to the increasing surveillance society and has also ignored health aspects regarding radiation from wireless technology.

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