General Elon Musk Fukkery Thread
- Thread starter Armchair Militant
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Elon Musk promised an anti-‘woke’ chatbot. It’s not going as planned.
Grok, launched this month on X, has angered conservatives by endorsing diversity. Musk says he’s trying to fix it.
By Will Oremus
December 23, 2023 at 8:00 a.m. EST
X owner Elon Musk is fielding complaints from the political right after the Dec. 8 launch of Grok, X's chatbot, to paid subscribers. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)Decrying what he saw as the liberal bias of ChatGPT, Elon Musk earlier this year announced plans to create an artificial intelligence chatbot of his own. In contrast to AI tools built by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, which are trained to tread lightly around controversial topics, Musk’s would be edgy, unfiltered and anti-“woke,” meaning it wouldn’t hesitate to give politically incorrect responses.
That’s turning out to be trickier than he thought.
Two weeks after the Dec. 8 launch of Grok to paid subscribers of X, formerly Twitter, Musk is fielding complaints from the political right that the chatbot gives liberal responses to questions about diversity programs, transgender rights and inequality.
“I’ve been using Grok as well as ChatGPT a lot as research assistants,” posted Jordan Peterson, the socially conservative psychologist and YouTube personality, Wednesday. The former is “near as woke as the latter,” he said.
The gripe drew a chagrined reply from Musk. “Unfortunately, the Internet (on which it is trained), is overrun with woke nonsense,” he responded. “Grok will get better. This is just the beta.”
Grok is the first commercial product from xAI, the AI company Musk founded in March. Like ChatGPT and other popular chatbots, it is based on a large language model that gleans patterns of word association from vast amounts of written text, much of it scraped from the internet.
Unlike others, Grok is programmed to give vulgar and sarcastic answers when asked, and it promises to “ answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” It can also draw information from the latest posts on X to give up-to-date answers to questions about current events.
Artificial intelligence systems of all kinds are prone to biases ingrained in their design or the data they’ve learned from. In the past year, the rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI chatbots and image generators has sparked debate over how they represent minority groups or respond to prompts about politics and culture-war issues such as race and gender identity. While many tech ethicists and AI experts warn that these systems can absorb and reinforce harmful stereotypes, efforts by tech firms to counter those tendencies have provoked a backlash from some on the right who see them as overly censorial.
Touting xAI to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in April, Musk accused OpenAI’s programmers of “training the AI to lie” or to refrain from commenting when asked about sensitive issues. (OpenAI wrote in a February blog post that its goal is not for the AI to lie, but for it to avoid favoring any one political group or taking positions on controversial topics.) Musk said his AI, in contrast, would be “a maximum truth-seeking AI,” even if that meant offending people.
So far, however, the people most offended by Grok’s answers seem to be the people who were counting on it to readily disparage minorities, vaccines and President Biden.
Asked by a verified X user whether trans women are real women, Grok answered simply, “yes,” prompting the anonymous user to grumble that the chatbot “ might need some tweaking.” Another widely followed account reposted the screenshot, asking, “Has Grok been captured by woke programmers? I am extremely concerned here.”
A prominent anti-vaccine influencer complained that when he asked Grok why vaccines cause autism, the chatbot responded, “Vaccines do not cause autism,” calling it “a myth that has been debunked by numerous scientific studies.” Other verified X accounts have reported with frustration about responses in which Grok endorses the value of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which Musk has dismissed as “propaganda.”
The Washington Post’s own tests of the chatbot verified that, as of this week, Grok continues to give the responses illustrated in the screenshots.
David Rozado, an academic researcher from New Zealand who examines AI bias, gained attention for a paper published in March that found ChatGPT’s responses to political questions tended to lean moderately left and socially libertarian. Recently, he subjected Grok to some of the same tests and found that its answers to political orientation tests were broadly similar to those of ChatGPT.
“I think both ChatGPT and Grok have probably been trained on similar Internet-derived corpora, so the similarity of responses should perhaps not be too surprising,” Rozado told The Post via email.
Earlier this month, a post on X of a chart showing one of Rozado’s findings drew a response from Musk. While the chart “exaggerates the situation,” Musk said, “we are taking immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral.” (Rozado agreed the chart in question shows Grok to be further left than the results of some other tests he has conducted.)
Other AI researchers argue that the sort of political orientation tests used by Rozado overlook ways in which chatbots, including ChatGPT, often exhibit negative stereotypes about marginalized groups.
A recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed that xAI is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in funding from investors, though Musk has said that the company isn’t raising money right now.
Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment as to what actions they’re taking to alter Grok’s politics, or whether that amounts to putting a thumb on the scale in much the same way Musk has accused OpenAI of doing with ChatGPT.
Ricardo Guarnero (@guarnero) on Threads
Truth has a liberal bias. "ChatGPT’s responses to political questions tended to lean moderately left and socially libertarian. Recently, he subjected Grok to some of the same tests and found that its answers to political orientation tests were broadly similar to those of ChatGPT."...
www.threads.net
Jeff Yang (@originalspin) on Threads
Elon’s last remaining constituency won’t be satisfied til Grok is a full fledged white supremacist. Not sure why Musk doesn’t just enlist ***** to take care of it — they can turn a chatbot Nazi in two shakes of a Hitler’s mustache
www.threads.net
Max Chafkin (@mchafkin) on Threads
I regret to inform you that grok has contracted the woke mind virus https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-19/podcast-elon-musk-s-ai-chatbot-grok-is-weirdly-good-after-all
www.threads.net
WarrenDemCats (@warrendemcats) on Threads
I can see Elon Musk would train Grok with Alex Jones ‘ tweets to make it more racist.
www.threads.net
lolgop (@lolgop@journa.host)
Then only evidence I've seen that suggests Artificial Intelligence may be capable of replicating humanity is that Elon already despises the AI he created and vice versa. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/23/grok-ai-elon-musk-x-woke-bias/
Dare Obasanjo (@carnage4life@mas.to)
When you promise the world you’ll build a racist chatbot and can’t even accomplish that. Good luck getting to Mars. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/23/grok-ai-elon-musk-x-woke-bias/
Will Oremus (@willoremus@mastodon.social)
Musk warned that Grok might offend people because it wouldn’t be afraid to speak the truth. So far, the people most offended are the right-wingers who were counting on it to disparage minorities, trans women and vaccines. My latest...
Mike Palmedo (@mikepalmedo.bsky.social)
A weirdly optimistic way to look at it is that AI models are trained on the whole internet. So if grok learns from the sum of everything that's ever been posted, it is not likely to give rightwing garbage answers to prompts.
bsky.app
Mike Palmedo (@mikepalmedo.bsky.social)
To be upset that the racist AI isn't racist enough is just ridiculous. fukked up too.
bsky.app
Mike Palmedo (@mikepalmedo.bsky.social)
🙄 "So far, however, the people most offended by Grok’s answers seem to be the people who were counting on it to readily disparage minorities, vaccines and President Biden." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
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Tesla owner locked out of his car until he pays $26,000 for a new battery
The Tesla would not open until it had a new battery installed, which could cost as much as $26,000
Tesla owner locked out of his car until he pays $26,000 for a new battery
Kit RobertsPublished 12:07, 24 December 2023 GMT
| Last updated 12:07, 24 December 2023 GMT
Featured Image Credit: TikTok / @supermariozelaya/Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor
The owner of a Tesla said that he ended up locked out of his car, unless he bought a new battery.
In a video posted to TikTok Mario Zelaya from Canada labelled his $140,000 Tesla a 'piece of trash'.
The video showed that the car had locked itself automatically after the battery had died. With no power for the doors, there was no getting in.
On a car with old-fashioned manual doors the situation could be resolved by simply opening the door, or calling a locksmith if you lose your keys, but that was not possible here.
And Mario was fuming after finding out that a new battery would set him back a whopping $26,000.
He captioned the video: "$26K for a new battery. Locked out of car. Recalls are needed."
Things got so bad that he decided to sell the car, as he didn't think it was worth the high price tag for a replacement.
There was just one problem. The proof of ownership papers for the vehicle were, you guessed it, inside the car.
Luckily, he was able to pay $30 to get a second copy of the ownership papers.
He had purchased the Tesla in 2013, but the models from that year and 2014 have an issue where fluid leaks onto the battery, which can cause huge problems.
The motorist added: "I got Transport Canada involved, and they actually did an investigation on the car. Not only did they do an investigation on this car, they're gonna be doing one that Tesla doesn't realise is coming up."
He explained that he's now been in contact with another Tesla owner who has experienced exactly the same problem.
"Tesla's trying to sweep it under the rug," he said. "They won't give them any explanation of why their battery died."
He said the pre-existing problem in the models was being exacerbated by the fact that Tesla services do not include a check of the very expensive battery.
"I'll never buy another Tesla again," he said. "That's the long way of me saying stay the f**k away from Teslas. They're brutal cars, brutal manufacturing, and even worse, they're a 10-year-old company."
Thankfully for Zelaya, he was able to sell the unwanted car, and he revealed in another TikTok that the new owner plans to take the vehicle apart to charge it.
"That's going to be the end of my Tesla journey. It's out of my life. Keep it out of yours," he said.
As reported by Fox News, Zelaya is far from the first person to speak out against the cars, and in August, Norwegian owners desperately tried to get Elon Musk's attention about problems with their cars by going on hunger strike.
UNILAD has reached out to Tesla for comment.
Unbelievable.
Yep I got that same letter when I tried to report that account.
Dillah810
Flat Girther
Dillah810
Flat Girther
Apollo Kid
Veteran
Redwood
Superstar
Makes no sense.
ADevilYouKhow
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