4 ms·

Update on an incident that happened with our Grok response bot on X yesterday

48 points by sxp 1y ago

bigyabai 1y ago
> Starting now, we are publishing our Grok system prompts openly on GitHub. You guys remember when Elon promised to do that with the Twitter algorithm and conveniently forgot to update it after his grand gesture of transparency? Pepperidge Farm remembers: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
WorldPeas 1y ago
What happened here, I don’t have an x account, what was the incident they referenced?
- minimaxir 1y ago
  Unfortunately every HN post about it got flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993332
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    It's disturbing (though telling) that HN has enough Elon sycophants to moderate our discussion like this. Another example of how HN's community eschews real technical discussion to maintain the illusion of unconditional progress.
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- vFunct 1y ago
  Elon decided he wanted to have Grok respond positively to allegations of “white genicode” in South Africa so he had his xAI engineers rewrite the system prompts to support the idea that “white genocide” exists. It then started talking about “white genocide” at every unrelated opportunity. Really unethical AI behavior by Elon.
  - minimaxir 1y ago
    To be clear, this is speculation, albeit a valid application of Occam's Razor.
    - monkeydreams 1y ago
      It was confirmed by Grok so....
      - minimaxir 1y ago
        The Grok screenshot that went around only said that it was given a command to talk about the issue, which is corroborated by this official tweet. (as an aside, "confirmed by Grok" is generally not strong evidence because it is a LLM) It did not confirm that Elon Musk did it which is a very specific allegation.
    - OJFord 1y ago
      First I'm hearing of it all, but no, that's clear conspiracy theory territory, Musk makes some intervention like that and then X AI publishes TFA about the 'unauthorised' action 'circumventing' established processes etc.? No, Occam is not satisfied. (Obligatory that's not what the razor is about anyway: it's that give a bunch of otherwise equally probable explanations, the simplest is likely the correct one; not just what's the simplest possible hypothesis you can imagine that is the answer.)
      - minimaxir 1y ago
        Elon has a very specific history around this particular issue that I suspect a random new-hire would not: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-africa-racist-white-farmers-trump-musk-genocide-ramaphosa-rcna190749 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-africa-racist-white... A CEO force-merging a change to production would indeed be an "unauthorized action circumventing established processes" by exact words. I agree it's ridiculous, but it's mostly because the alternative hypotheses make no sense. There's making a change to a prompt without testing or review (e.g. the ChatGPT sycophancy incident), and then there's prompting a LLM with a very specific response that is not relevant to most people.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
suraci 1y ago
[flagged]
rsynnott 1y ago
In retrospect, hiring PW Botha was perhaps a mistake.
jrosendale 1y ago
I don't see how making the source code public is helpful if there's a "{{custom_instructions}}" variable that can be inserted. It's not as if people are upset that "white genocide" was hard-coded into the prompt instead of being passed as a template variable.
- diplocorp 1y ago
  That's presumably the user's custom instructions. Empty by default.
dcchambers 1y ago
Another Grok post flagged. Surprise surprise. The trust is already broken. They can claim they will open source the system prompt all they want but there's no point in believing what they say. Elon clearly does what Elon wants to do.

48 points by sxp 1y ago

> Starting now, we are publishing our Grok system prompts openly on GitHub. You guys remember when Elon promised to do that with the Twitter algorithm and conveniently forgot to update it after his grand gesture of transparency? Pepperidge Farm remembers: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm

WorldPeas 1y ago

What happened here, I don’t have an x account, what was the incident they referenced?

minimaxir 1y ago
Unfortunately every HN post about it got flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993332
- bigyabai 1y ago
  It's disturbing (though telling) that HN has enough Elon sycophants to moderate our discussion like this. Another example of how HN's community eschews real technical discussion to maintain the illusion of unconditional progress.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
vFunct 1y ago
Elon decided he wanted to have Grok respond positively to allegations of “white genicode” in South Africa so he had his xAI engineers rewrite the system prompts to support the idea that “white genocide” exists. It then started talking about “white genocide” at every unrelated opportunity. Really unethical AI behavior by Elon.
- minimaxir 1y ago
  To be clear, this is speculation, albeit a valid application of Occam's Razor.
  - monkeydreams 1y ago
    It was confirmed by Grok so....
    - minimaxir 1y ago
      The Grok screenshot that went around only said that it was given a command to talk about the issue, which is corroborated by this official tweet. (as an aside, "confirmed by Grok" is generally not strong evidence because it is a LLM) It did not confirm that Elon Musk did it which is a very specific allegation.
  - OJFord 1y ago
    First I'm hearing of it all, but no, that's clear conspiracy theory territory, Musk makes some intervention like that and then X AI publishes TFA about the 'unauthorised' action 'circumventing' established processes etc.? No, Occam is not satisfied. (Obligatory that's not what the razor is about anyway: it's that give a bunch of otherwise equally probable explanations, the simplest is likely the correct one; not just what's the simplest possible hypothesis you can imagine that is the answer.)
    - minimaxir 1y ago
      Elon has a very specific history around this particular issue that I suspect a random new-hire would not: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-africa-racist-white-farmers-trump-musk-genocide-ramaphosa-rcna190749 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-africa-racist-white... A CEO force-merging a change to production would indeed be an "unauthorized action circumventing established processes" by exact words. I agree it's ridiculous, but it's mostly because the alternative hypotheses make no sense. There's making a change to a prompt without testing or review (e.g. the ChatGPT sycophancy incident), and then there's prompting a LLM with a very specific response that is not relevant to most people.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

suraci 1y ago

[flagged]

rsynnott 1y ago

In retrospect, hiring PW Botha was perhaps a mistake.

jrosendale 1y ago

I don't see how making the source code public is helpful if there's a "{{custom_instructions}}" variable that can be inserted. It's not as if people are upset that "white genocide" was hard-coded into the prompt instead of being passed as a template variable.

diplocorp 1y ago
That's presumably the user's custom instructions. Empty by default.

dcchambers 1y ago

Another Grok post flagged. Surprise surprise. The trust is already broken. They can claim they will open source the system prompt all they want but there's no point in believing what they say. Elon clearly does what Elon wants to do.