Elon Musk’s ‘scary smart’ Grok 3 release — What you need to know

Innovation

xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, is set to launch Grok 3 on Monday, Feb. 17 (local time). According to xAI, this latest version of its chatbot, which Musk describes as “scary smart,” represents a major step forward, improving reasoning, computational power and adaptability.
FRANCE-TECHNOLOGY-AI-GROK
Screen displaying the logo of Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, the American company specializing in artificial intelligence and its founder South African businessman Elon Musk. (AFP via Getty Images)

xAI reports that Grok 3’s development was accelerated by its Colossus supercomputer, which was built in just eight months. The system, powered by 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, provided 200 million GPU-hours for training—ten times more than its predecessor, Grok 2. This significant boost in computational resources has helped Grok 3 process large datasets more efficiently, reducing training times and improving accuracy.

Beyond increased computing power, xAI has adjusted its training approach to improve Grok 3’s capabilities. The model now incorporates synthetic datasets, self-correction mechanisms and reinforcement learning to enhance its performance:

  • Synthetic Datasets – These are artificially generated datasets rather than collected from real-world sources. They are used to train AI models by simulating various scenarios, ensuring a diverse and controlled dataset. This helps improve learning efficiency and address data privacy concerns.
  • Self-Correction Mechanisms – These are AI techniques that allow a model to identify and correct its own mistakes. By evaluating its outputs and comparing them with known correct responses, the model can refine its answers over time, reducing errors and improving accuracy.
  • Reinforcement Learning – A type of machine learning where an AI model learns by receiving rewards or penalties for its actions. The system is trained to maximize positive outcomes through trial and error, improving its decision-making capabilities.

According to xAI and Musk, these improvements will reduce incorrect responses—known as hallucinations—by using multiple validation steps, improve logical accuracy by checking information against reliable sources, and adapt more effectively through continuous self-evaluation and learning.

xAI also reports that human feedback loops and contextual training have been introduced to ensure more natural and accurate responses.

  • Human feedback loops refer to a training method where AI models receive direct feedback from human reviewers to refine their responses. Humans assess the accuracy, relevance, and usefulness of AI-generated content, helping the model improve over time.
  • Contextual training involves teaching the AI to understand and adapt its responses based on context. This means considering previous interactions, user intent, and surrounding information to generate more accurate and relevant answers.

According to xAI, the model has been designed to generate insightful and unexpected solutions, making it a more effective tool for problem-solving—and early tests suggest that Grok 3 outperforms its competitors, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s DeepMind Gemini, in complex reasoning tasks. In a video interview at The World Governments Summit, held in Dubai from Feb. 11-13, Musk stated that “this might be the last time that an AI is better than Grok.”

This story was originally published on forbes.com

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