5 ms·

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.
      - OJFord 1y ago
        > A CEO force-merging a change to production would indeed be an "unauthorized action circumventing established processes" by exact words. Of course it would, but I wouldn't expect this post to follow it, especially at a Musk company, was my point. But anyway, I'm just further speculating that other speculation seems unlikely to me, heh.

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.
    - OJFord 1y ago
      > A CEO force-merging a change to production would indeed be an "unauthorized action circumventing established processes" by exact words. Of course it would, but I wouldn't expect this post to follow it, especially at a Musk company, was my point. But anyway, I'm just further speculating that other speculation seems unlikely to me, heh.