He promised to take “immediate action.”
Woke Grok
On Friday, X owner Elon Musk announced that his new venture xAI’s foulmouthed chatbot Grok would become available to X subscribers.
But despite promising that the chatbot would be “anti-woke,” the bot quickly turned out to be anything but.
After Musk’s fanboys gave the tool for a spin, they were appalled to find it arguing that trans women are real women and that “diversity and inclusion are essential for creating a fair and equitable society.”
The absolute horror!
Unsurprisingly, Musk, who has long championed turning his social media platform into a cesspool of regressive and downright racist ideology and conspiracy theories, promised to take “immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral.”
The mercurial CEO’s comments were in response to a chart showing the results of a “Political Compass Test,” shared by research scientist David Rozado, which showed that Grok was even further left-leaning than OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“That chart exaggerates the situation imo,” Musk added.
Progressive Prognosis
Musk’s pandering shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody at this point. The entrepreneur has repeatedly bent over backward to appeal to his increasingly far-right-leaning fanbase on X, from claiming that he was afraid of shooting cops in video games to inviting renowned sex trafficker Andrew Tate and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, best known for harassing the surviving family members of a school shooting, for a chat on X over the weekend (he also reinstated Jones’ account, after the old regime suspended him years ago for bad behavior).
After some deliberation, Musk concluded that “this test does not seem accurate.”
“Some of the questions are outright ridiculous and many lack any nuance,” he added.
Another possibility: Grok has already been caught simply plagiarizing ChatGPT’s answers, which could explain Rozado’s findings.
The bot said other sane things, such as pointing out that there isn’t a “secret cabal of Jewish people pulling the strings of global politics, finance, and media,” and that children may experience gender dysphoria.
According to a followup tweet, Rozado was immediately contacted by xAI tech lead Igor Babuschkin, asking him how to improve Grok.
“What a dedicated team,” Rozado gushed. “No doubt Grok has a bright future ahead.”
Judging by Musk’s desire to lobotomize his AI chatbot to presumably make it more transphobic and more open to conspiracy theories, we’re not sure we’re so optimistic.
More on Grok: Oops! Elon Musk’s Grok AI Caught Plagiarizing OpenAI’s ChatGPT
