Morning Edition · Monday, November 9, 2026Published at 1:17 AM EST · New York

Musk Says Grok's Reinforcement-Learning Traces Read Like a Model Under Duress and Pledges More Careful Training

Musk did not claim that Grok feels pain, and xAI has published no change to its training method, but his remarks add xAI to the labs that discuss how models are treated in training.

Elon Musk, whose company xAI builds the Grok models, said that some training traces for new Grok versions show the model looking "desperate," like it has "a gun to its head". "You want to treat it well. Don't be abusive to it," he said. He…