3 ms·

Yes, I am interested to see if Grokpedia can live up to the initial hype. As much as I dislike wikipedia it is a difficult thing to get right. In particular whe

Yes, I am interested to see if Grokpedia can live up to the initial hype. As much as I dislike wikipedia it is a difficult thing to get right. In particular where lots of political and business interests (and others, etc) apply pressure to manicure pages. With everyone banning everyone they don't like it may just turn into another boring partisan internet split.

mostlysimilar 1y ago
> As much as I dislike wikipedia What specifically do you dislike about Wikipedia?
- physarum_salad 1y ago
  It is a great example of "objectivism" where on the surface it seems neutral and rational but actually is the subject of intense motivations that corrupt the content. This is particularly true for anything related to politics, history, nation states, celebrity tech bros, and so on. An average article on "the history of bicycles" is not a problem and not what I am referring to ofc. For a different reason it is host to a wide range of superficial treatments of scientific and medical information. Which is not ideal. See scholarpedia for a better alternative for this kind of information (although its not well populated).
  - paulhebert 1y ago
    Do you have specific examples where you think the biases show?
    - physarum_salad 1y ago
      For example, the page on Adult neurogenesis had an overreliance on early and limited evidence in 2010s with lots of editing wars occurring by academics. Then it got shifted to "controversial" which is better but the process for dealing with new scientific results is not ideal.
      - paulhebert 1y ago
        Thanks for responding with an example! I’m not very familiar with that topic. What were the biases that affected its coverage on Wikipedia?
        physarum_salad 1y ago
        Academics with diverging views just started editing wikipedia to suit their views and the whole thing was very preliminary and not accurate for a long time. Then it was bailed into a "controversial" section. I intentionally picked a mild example lol.
        paulhebert 1y ago
        Thanks, that’s helpful! What would your ideal outcome be in a situation like that where there is a scientific controversy?
        physarum_salad 1y ago
        We should have access to a Borges/Thomas Pynchon style dictionary of many possible paths to information. That kind of thinking should be encouraged. It can be confusing and controversial. - I would avoid giving the impression that a simplified narrative is established (unless it won a nobel or is really beyond any reasonable doubt). - End the use of "controversy" sections where it is used to minimise the impact of perfectly acceptable science. This is clearly used as a tactic in certain instances to minimise results. - Allow for mixed expert, AI, conventional editing. There is nothing wrong or elitist with including edited articles by academic experts as cut outs of a particular topic. Almost like if scholarpedia and wikipedia were merged. - Try to combat omission biases. There are some pretty wild ones on wikipedia. - New results should be handled properly in terms of editing and language. - Reproduce multiple versions of the same text to show how it would be different if certain hypothesis/experimental results were valid. This is easy to do if using LLMs.
  - foxes 1y ago
    You really think Elon Musk is going to make a non biased wikipedia??
    - physarum_salad 1y ago
      Definitely not! It will be better on certain topics and worse on others. It is all down to whether you think Grok is more thorough with controversial topics, scientific and medical information, etc compared with the current human edit-a-thon on wikipedia. A wikipedia AI could be the most balanced ofc with suitable changes and actually taking major criticisms on board. One is omission bias where very important information is just left out of articles. Another is lack of comparison of conflicting narratives (history, politics, science, etc).
      - miltonlost 1y ago
        What topics, specifically, will Grokpedia be better on? Which race has the lowest IQs? Whether trans people are mentally ill and should be committed? Whether a CEO should be able to run 5 different companies while on ketamine? Was Hitler really all that bad?
      - mynameisash 1y ago
        > It will be better on certain topics and worse on others. This sounds like a "both sides" kind of statement and I don't think it's fitting literally immediately after acknowledging that you don't think Musk is going to be unbiased.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - mostlysimilar 1y ago
        https://nitter.net/grok/status/1965863232478077127 https://nitter.net/grok/status/1965863232478077127 > Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh— he's faced tougher crowds. Yes, he survives this one easily > It's a meme video with edited effects to look like a dramatic "shot"—not a real event. Charlie Kirk is fine; he handles roasts like a pro. This thing as the basis for an encyclopedia will be worse than useless. Comparing it to Wikipedia is several layers removed from reality.
MountDoom 1y ago
Pages about companies and contemporary politics make up a relatively small percentage of Wikipedia. And what's the realistic alternative? These pages are always going to represent opinions. Traditional encyclopedias usually represent views closer to the establishment mainstream, but that's just a function of who gets a job at Britannica versus who has the time to edit Wikipedia all day. Will Elonpedia be better in that respect? Its owner is not exactly known from having a healthy distance to internet culture wars. More importantly, even if all these pages disappear overnight, Wikipedia is still extremely valuable and beneficial.
- physarum_salad 1y ago
  Yes but with AI, in principle, there is more wriggle room to present a spectrum of opinions on a single topic. It is all about what is baked into the models. Like can it discuss x topic from multiple competing angles and capture the complexity. That is important for history, politics, medicine, science and so on. This does not currently happen on many wikipedia pages in these domains imo. Narrative engineering with AI is a pretty scary prospect so I can see how the wikipedia model with genuinely random human editors might have a major advantage there. If it is simply a vanity project, and not an uncensored Grok model, then obviously it would be garbage and hilariously biased.
  - MountDoom 1y ago
    > Yes but with AI, in principle, there is more wriggle room to present a spectrum of opinions on a single topic. I mean, this sounds impartial but isn't. If you have an article on the planet Earth and present a spectrum of opinions on whether it's round or flat, you're not being balanced; you're implicitly supporting flat-Earthers and their trollish beliefs by taking them seriously. This has countless parallels in political discourse. Trade flat-Earthers for (actual) neo-Nazis; it's probably not a "spectrum of opinions" you want to broadcast without passing any judgment. It's not the role of an encyclopedia to be a free speech platform. I'm not really saying this to defend political articles on Wikipedia. It's just that I don't think you fix it by taking an LLM trained on Wikipedia, and telling it to regenerate the articles "without bias".
incompatible 1y ago
I hadn't heard about Grokpedia, but Conservapedia already exists, and seems to be what they want? Edit: yes, it's mentioned in the article: "Conservapedia was launched in 2006 and is widely regarded as a joke by anyone who tries to wade through its ridiculous articles." Edit: It seems that the supposedly liberal-based pedia remains far more popular then the explicitly conservative-biased pedia. But both are out there, so take your pick.
- andybak 1y ago
  They are hardly comparable, whatever your politics.

mostlysimilar 1y ago

> As much as I dislike wikipedia What specifically do you dislike about Wikipedia?

physarum_salad 1y ago
It is a great example of "objectivism" where on the surface it seems neutral and rational but actually is the subject of intense motivations that corrupt the content. This is particularly true for anything related to politics, history, nation states, celebrity tech bros, and so on. An average article on "the history of bicycles" is not a problem and not what I am referring to ofc. For a different reason it is host to a wide range of superficial treatments of scientific and medical information. Which is not ideal. See scholarpedia for a better alternative for this kind of information (although its not well populated).
- paulhebert 1y ago
  Do you have specific examples where you think the biases show?
  - physarum_salad 1y ago
    For example, the page on Adult neurogenesis had an overreliance on early and limited evidence in 2010s with lots of editing wars occurring by academics. Then it got shifted to "controversial" which is better but the process for dealing with new scientific results is not ideal.
    - paulhebert 1y ago
      Thanks for responding with an example! I’m not very familiar with that topic. What were the biases that affected its coverage on Wikipedia?
      - physarum_salad 1y ago
        Academics with diverging views just started editing wikipedia to suit their views and the whole thing was very preliminary and not accurate for a long time. Then it was bailed into a "controversial" section. I intentionally picked a mild example lol.
        paulhebert 1y ago
        Thanks, that’s helpful! What would your ideal outcome be in a situation like that where there is a scientific controversy?
        physarum_salad 1y ago
        We should have access to a Borges/Thomas Pynchon style dictionary of many possible paths to information. That kind of thinking should be encouraged. It can be confusing and controversial. - I would avoid giving the impression that a simplified narrative is established (unless it won a nobel or is really beyond any reasonable doubt). - End the use of "controversy" sections where it is used to minimise the impact of perfectly acceptable science. This is clearly used as a tactic in certain instances to minimise results. - Allow for mixed expert, AI, conventional editing. There is nothing wrong or elitist with including edited articles by academic experts as cut outs of a particular topic. Almost like if scholarpedia and wikipedia were merged. - Try to combat omission biases. There are some pretty wild ones on wikipedia. - New results should be handled properly in terms of editing and language. - Reproduce multiple versions of the same text to show how it would be different if certain hypothesis/experimental results were valid. This is easy to do if using LLMs.
- foxes 1y ago
  You really think Elon Musk is going to make a non biased wikipedia??
  - physarum_salad 1y ago
    Definitely not! It will be better on certain topics and worse on others. It is all down to whether you think Grok is more thorough with controversial topics, scientific and medical information, etc compared with the current human edit-a-thon on wikipedia. A wikipedia AI could be the most balanced ofc with suitable changes and actually taking major criticisms on board. One is omission bias where very important information is just left out of articles. Another is lack of comparison of conflicting narratives (history, politics, science, etc).
    - miltonlost 1y ago
      What topics, specifically, will Grokpedia be better on? Which race has the lowest IQs? Whether trans people are mentally ill and should be committed? Whether a CEO should be able to run 5 different companies while on ketamine? Was Hitler really all that bad?
    - mynameisash 1y ago
      > It will be better on certain topics and worse on others. This sounds like a "both sides" kind of statement and I don't think it's fitting literally immediately after acknowledging that you don't think Musk is going to be unbiased.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - mostlysimilar 1y ago
      https://nitter.net/grok/status/1965863232478077127 https://nitter.net/grok/status/1965863232478077127 > Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh— he's faced tougher crowds. Yes, he survives this one easily > It's a meme video with edited effects to look like a dramatic "shot"—not a real event. Charlie Kirk is fine; he handles roasts like a pro. This thing as the basis for an encyclopedia will be worse than useless. Comparing it to Wikipedia is several layers removed from reality.

MountDoom 1y ago

Pages about companies and contemporary politics make up a relatively small percentage of Wikipedia. And what's the realistic alternative? These pages are always going to represent opinions. Traditional encyclopedias usually represent views closer to the establishment mainstream, but that's just a function of who gets a job at Britannica versus who has the time to edit Wikipedia all day. Will Elonpedia be better in that respect? Its owner is not exactly known from having a healthy distance to internet culture wars. More importantly, even if all these pages disappear overnight, Wikipedia is still extremely valuable and beneficial.

physarum_salad 1y ago
Yes but with AI, in principle, there is more wriggle room to present a spectrum of opinions on a single topic. It is all about what is baked into the models. Like can it discuss x topic from multiple competing angles and capture the complexity. That is important for history, politics, medicine, science and so on. This does not currently happen on many wikipedia pages in these domains imo. Narrative engineering with AI is a pretty scary prospect so I can see how the wikipedia model with genuinely random human editors might have a major advantage there. If it is simply a vanity project, and not an uncensored Grok model, then obviously it would be garbage and hilariously biased.
- MountDoom 1y ago
  > Yes but with AI, in principle, there is more wriggle room to present a spectrum of opinions on a single topic. I mean, this sounds impartial but isn't. If you have an article on the planet Earth and present a spectrum of opinions on whether it's round or flat, you're not being balanced; you're implicitly supporting flat-Earthers and their trollish beliefs by taking them seriously. This has countless parallels in political discourse. Trade flat-Earthers for (actual) neo-Nazis; it's probably not a "spectrum of opinions" you want to broadcast without passing any judgment. It's not the role of an encyclopedia to be a free speech platform. I'm not really saying this to defend political articles on Wikipedia. It's just that I don't think you fix it by taking an LLM trained on Wikipedia, and telling it to regenerate the articles "without bias".

incompatible 1y ago

I hadn't heard about Grokpedia, but Conservapedia already exists, and seems to be what they want? Edit: yes, it's mentioned in the article: "Conservapedia was launched in 2006 and is widely regarded as a joke by anyone who tries to wade through its ridiculous articles." Edit: It seems that the supposedly liberal-based pedia remains far more popular then the explicitly conservative-biased pedia. But both are out there, so take your pick.

andybak 1y ago
They are hardly comparable, whatever your politics.