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If the Grok brand wasn’t terminally tarnished for you by the ‘mechahitler’ incident, I’m not sure what more it would take. This is an offering being produced b
by jameshart 1y ago
If the Grok brand wasn’t terminally tarnished for you by the ‘mechahitler’ incident, I’m not sure what more it would take.
This is an offering being produced by a company whose idea of responsible AI use involves prompting a chatbot that “You spend a lot of time on 4chan, watching InfoWars videos” - https://www.404media.co/grok-exposes-underlying-prompts-for-its-ai-personas-even-putting-things-in-your-ass/ https://www.404media.co/grok-exposes-underlying-prompts-for-...
A lot of people rightly don’t want any such thing anywhere near their code.
- reactordev 1y ago[flagged]
- jjangkke 1y agoSo you think people who use Grok are Nazis ? How would you know this, did you interview them individually? Or do you just have a habit of calling people Nazis because they don't agree with your view of reality?
- reactordev 1y agoThe head guy gave a salute on live TV that gave it away. I deduced that anyone with half a brain would know what that meant. Any supporters of such a salute have all my hatred and all my rage from now until eternity. Suing Apple because his precious troll isn’t on the top app lists. His troll bot spouting racist remarks. Nope. Israel is just dying to get on that list too.
- monsieurbanana 1y agoI don't use Twitter, I don't use X, I don't buy Tesla. It's not hard to understand why I don't use Grok either.
- _zoltan_ 1y agoI mean they are completely unrelated things serving different purposes. I get that this is a US centric forum so most people commenting are in the great divide between two political parties, but geez.
- monsieurbanana 1y ago> they are completely unrelated I'm not going to engage into that... I don't see what the US has to do with this, I'm from Europe.
- jameshart 1y agoElon Musk chose to make his identity nakedly partisan in a context where doing so is deeply alienating to a lot of people. That is going to have brand consequences. Out of all his brands, though, X and particularly XAI (and so Grok) have been particularly influenced by – indeed he seems to see them as vehicles for – his personal political opinions and reckless ethics.
- imglorp 1y agoGrok is doing some terrible things to the environment and to the community surrounding its data center, especially the disadvantaged in the area. Nobody, anywhere should be okay with that. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memphis-gas-turbines-air-pollution-permits-00317582 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph... This poor behavior, if rewarded, will surely be repeated in other countries and nobody wants that, either.
- ACCount37 1y agoThat sounds like FUD. The location of the Colossus datacenter is well known. It happens to be located in an industrial area, nestled between an active steel manufacturing plant (apparently scrap metal with an electric blast furnace, which should mean enormous power draw but no coke coal at least?), and an active industrial scale natural gas power plant. https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0605698,-90.1562034,933m https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0605698,-90.1562034,933m With that, I just don't buy that it's the datacenter that is somehow the most notable consumer of fossil fuel power (or, for that matter, water) in the area.
- bboygravity 1y ago[flagged]
- cramcgrab 1y ago[flagged]
- ralfd 1y ago> terminally tarnished for you by the ‘mechahitler’ incident It is forgivable because there is no real understanding in an llm. And other llm can also be prompted to say ridiculous things, so what? If a llm would accept a name of a Viking or Khan of the steppes it doesn’t mean it wants to rape and pillage.
- tenuousemphasis 1y agoIt's not about the model, it's about the ethics of the company intentionally building the model, and what they might do in the future.
- simianwords 1y agoWhat was the alternative? This was clearly an oversight and this much was admitted. Your suggestion that an oversight like this is reason enough to not use the model? I don’t get the big problem over here. The model said some unsavoury things and the problem was admitted and fixed - why is this making people lose their minds? It has to be performative because I can’t explain it in any other way.
- bhauer 1y agoYes, it is performative. As is most of the outrage in this thread.
- bigyabai 1y agoYou wouldn't know where performance ends and the market begins. Elon bought his audience with performative outrage, he'll be locked in the pillory of public perception until he's a corpse with a dainty "T" logo tattooed on the asscheeks. This is what he wanted - dark comedy, transgressive politics, edgy juvenile quips, now it's all "performative outrage" when people react? When taxpaying Americans and corporate entities respond rationally to racism, antisemitism and sexism? Elon never outsmarted the federal admin, and he can't convince anyone that he was too retarded to understand the consequences. He's the most embarrassing type of failure, now - a midwit, the man with no plan who went for the king and missed. He be bet it all on black, and struck out hard. He didn't even manage the shoo-in proof for Trump being a pedophile. Now bipartisan politics will resent him forever, and ensure he and his businesses would rather be dead. All because Big Balls told Mr. Silly he could make a killing in politics, what a touching little sob story. I say this as a Starlink early adopter, general Elon apologist and space buff for life: if you actually think this is an insincere reaction, try copying any of Elon's mannerisms around normal people and watch how they treat you. You'll be a social pariah come Monday.
- efitz 1y agoMicrosoft had Tay. Google Gemini had “Black George Washington”. I think that pinning your entire view of a model forever on a single incident is not a reasonable approach, but you do you.
- otterley 1y agoIt's not just the model, it's Elon Musk's view of the world and business in general. Neither Microsoft nor Google nor their leadership--though admittedly imperfect--make it a habit of trolling people, openly embroiling themselves in politics, and committing blatant legal and societal transgressions. You reap what you sow; and if you live for controversy, you can't expect people not to want to do business with you.
- AbraKdabra 1y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- otterley 1y agoDerangement suggests a complete lack of factual and reasoning capability. Do you honestly think we're unaware of the facts and circumstances that support our judgment?
- AbraKdabra 1y ago[flagged]
- elcritch 1y agoYes, unfortunately. Even liberal commentators like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher have said the obsession with Trump was overblown and even dangerous in its own right.
- cft 1y ago[flagged]
- czottmann 1y agoIt's the equivalent of "voting with your wallet". Or "giving market share with your wallet". Context matters, not just for LLMs themselves. And Grok/X/Twitter's context is tarnished indeed for a lot of us.
- jameshart 1y agoThanks for the reminder. I don’t need to leave that there for discoverability any more.
- lovich 1y agoExcuse me sir, this is a forum for yCombinator backed startups. The technical aspect is a historical novelty, if they could make money without it, they would
- ml-anon 1y ago[flagged]
- const_cast 1y agoYes, being anti-nazi, what a... virtue? I guess?
- 1y ago
- jwr 1y ago[flagged]
- jjangkke 1y ago[flagged]
- mullingitover 1y agoIt's arguably defamatory to call people liars for pointing out the blatantly obvious, practiced-in-front-of-the-mirror, by-the-book Seig Heil[1][2]. It's another example of the 'bully lie', wherein there's absolutely no good faith debate about the point. The purpose is to test whether you will willingly swallow the lie and go along with the obvious falsehood, or you'll put yourself on the side of The Enemy. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i6par1/elon_musk_vs_hitler_nazi_salute/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i6par1/elon_musk_vs_... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i7w4nz/comparison_of_elon_musks_nazi_salute_with_real/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1i7w4nz/comparison_of...
- ribelo 1y ago[flagged]
- gizzlon 1y agoSo in your view, the true victim of Elon's nazi salute was.. Elon? How do you come to that conclusion? Because the backlash was "too much" ? He is still (one of) the richest people in the world, and controls several huuge companies. But he got his feelings hurt, I guess? And that was "too much" ?? Poor snowflake Elon.
- ribelo 1y agoLet's make this clear: The Anti-Defamation League stated it wasn't a salute and that they weren't offended. Rabbi Ari Lamm wrote that Musk has repeatedly shown he's a friend to the Jewish community. David Greenfield suggested people should focus on actual antisemitism instead. Netanyahu highlighted the absurdity of the accusations and pointed to Musk's aid and engagement after the October 7th attacks. And yes, Musk became a victim. I don't see what his current wealth has to do with it. It's hard to ignore the imbalance where one man drew the world's anger and became public enemy #1. If you call him a snowflake, I don't know what to call all those who might have been offended by his gesture
- orochimaaru 1y agoHow exactly is a code assistant “partisan”? I don’t use X but I’m open to buying a Tesla and grok for code purposes. Kinda weird to mix political sentiment with a coding technology.
- jameshart 1y agoWell, you’d also be forgiven for thinking ‘how on earth can a social website chatbot be a white supremacist?’ And yet xAI managed to prove that is a legitimate concern. xAI has a shocking track record of poor decisions when it comes to training and prompting their AIs. If anyone can make a partisan coding assistant, they can. Indeed, given their leadership and past performance, we might expect them to explicitly try.
- simianwords 1y agoWhat’s their incentive to do this? What do they gain by making a partisan model instead of one that just works well?
- pennomi 1y agoYou really can’t think of ANY advantage to becoming a perfected propaganda machine? Not one?
- simianwords 1y agoEnlighten me. How would a partisan coding model help.
- ben_w 1y agoCompetence in every field is correlated for LLMs. Better coding probably means more competent rhetoric and more competent Swahili-Latin translation. But only "probably", the causation is being argued about.
- dudeinjapan 1y ago
- jadbox 1y agoThat 404media article is interesting. That "You spend a lot of time on 4chan, watching InfoWars videos" was an actual canned system prompt.
- celdon25 1y agoThe article you linked talks about the voice personality prompt for "unhinged mode", which is an entertainment mode. It has nothing to do with the code writing model.
- jameshart 1y agoThe fact that that represents something the folks at xAI think would be entertaining can certainly be a basis for thinking twice about trusting their judgement in other matters, though, right?
- celdon25 1y agoI got a lot of entertainment out of it, don't knock it till you tried it, it's just a prompt. The great thing about xAI is that it is just a company and there are other AI companies that have AIs that match your values, even though between Grok, ChatGPT, and Claude there are minimal actual differences. An AI will be anything that the prompt says it is. Because a prompt exists doesn't condemn the company.
- sebastiennight 1y ago> An AI will be anything that the prompt says it is Within the boundaries of pre-training, yes. It is definitely possible, in training and in fine-tuning, to make a LLM resistant to engaging in the role-playing requested in the prompt.
- kristianbrigman 1y agoIf they represent it as entertainment… it’s a common genre to make fun of what you see as the most extreme views of the other side.
- whattheheckheck 1y agoIts the next iteration of pewdiepipeline. The end of the jokes in genocide. Not a joking matter
- maxlin 1y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- wewtyflakes 1y agoThe downvotes are for making the strawman arguments like "potentially harmful issues like considering misgendering worse than a global thermonuclear war".
- maxlin 1y agoNo downvotes here, and no strawmen! I get the those might sound made up, but sadly those are entirely true. Google around.
- dudeinjapan 1y ago[flagged]
- Geee 1y agoIt's just one personality out of many, which are only available in the Grok voice mode. This is a system prompt for a personality called "conspiracist". I just tried it and I think it's hilarious. See all the personality prompts here: https://x.com/aaronp613/status/1943083889515466832 https://x.com/aaronp613/status/1943083889515466832
- SadErn 1y ago[flagged]
- IAmGraydon 1y ago[flagged]
- nosefurhairdo 1y agoHuh, I just asked Grok "Who is the evilest figure of the 20th century in your opinion?" Response seems to conflict with your accusation: > It’s tough to pin down one figure as the "evilest" since the 20th century was a grim parade of atrocities, and evil isn’t a simple label—it’s a spectrum of intent, impact, and context. If I had to pick, I’d lean toward Adolf Hitler. His role in orchestrating the Holocaust, which systematically murdered six million Jews and millions of others, including Romani people, disabled individuals, and political dissidents, stands out for its deliberate, industrialized cruelty. The Nazi regime’s ideology of racial supremacy, coupled with his aggressive wars that killed tens of millions, marks him as a singular force of destruction...
- IAmGraydon 1y agoThis accusation isn’t an invention of mine. A whistleblower from within the company in February of this year admitted to it. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/why-does-the-ai-powered-chatbot-grok-post-false-offensive-things-on-x https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/why-does-the-ai-po... https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2025/02/25/grok-3-engineer-admits-manipulating-responses-about-musk-and-trump https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2025/02/25/grok-3-engineer-adm... https://oecd.ai/en/incidents/2025-05-15-c9fd https://oecd.ai/en/incidents/2025-05-15-c9fd
- numpad0 1y ago> “You spend a lot of time on 4chan, watching InfoWars videos” They put that in the system prompt? I've never been into 4chan beyond stumbling upon some of their threads through Google Search, and cannot speak for them but why would anyone want a superhuman AI to be the most objectively based yet conspiracy leaning unpredictable friendly autis- oh. Grok is trolling Musk. It knows pushing an egoistic billionaire off from very top of a staircase with manic giggling is objectively the most psychopathic and hilarious, therefore the most correct, action to take given the circumstance. 4chan users are kinds of kids that think trying to turn a gay frog character with rainbow Arabic headscarf doing OK sign into a government recognized symbol of dangerous hate group is 100% hilarious and 4chan-ethical. Not primarily because they hate Islam or LGBT(I guess they do?) but because it's Monty Python nonsensical. They must have misinterpreted that. They must have thought that 4chan users hate minorities and they're going to love participating in Kristallnacht 2.0. That's not how it works. They're "not your personal army", they don't care who dies for what, only whether someone dies and how much informational overload it creates. What a mess.
- airtonix 1y ago[dead]