Elon Musk Loves em The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy /em . Um, Has He Read It?

Over the weekend, Elon Musk announced the first major product from his artificial-intelligence outfit xAI: Grok, a ChatGPT-like bot available in beta mode for users who are subscribed to the $16-a-month Premium plan on his social network X. This newest entrant in the chatbot arms race takes as its name a term from the libertarian science-fiction classic that's long been one of Musk's favorites, Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. But its actual output, Musk says, takes inspiration from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, another foundational novel for the Tesla and SpaceX boss. Musk's many, many companies often reference terms he is attached to on either a personal level (the letter X) or just finds funny (his frequent callbacks to old-school memes). But this one is kind of confounding, and not just because Stranger and Hitchhiker's are only comparable works insofar as they are both influential sci-fi novels. Grok is an AI modeled after The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask! Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don't use it if you hate humor!