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Pentagon to start using Grok as part of a $200 million contract with Elon Musk's xAI
(www.cbsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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I agree that $200M is way too much to spend on a LLMs but talking about downloading open source models is completely missing the point. They are not paying for some sort of Grok license so that they can access this amazing model. They are paying for the computational capacity needed to run this model and provide access to thousands of people over some period of time. The alternative here is to simply buy everyone a subscription to OpenAI or something.
With open source you have the advantage of being able to use different LLMs for different tasks which can be more efficient. Surely Pentagon has access to enough compute power to set this up for a thousand people? The rest is UI, IT and fine tuning by a couple data scientists/programmers trained in LLMs. Surely it is better than Elon who changes his mind on politics every five days and thinks that twenty year olds can run critical government infrastructure because they worship him. Not an expert, just don't like big tech companies, particularly Melon.
Yes, that's what needed. It's not just about downloading an open source LLM. That was my point. I see we agree now.
Alright let's go then!