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The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. It’s an experiment with LLMs. Who cares? It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense
by jameslk 11mo ago
The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. It’s an experiment with LLMs. Who cares?
It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense, whatever. The internet is like that. Maybe it’ll actually become something useful. Or it’ll inspire something useful.
Regardless, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so these articles just give the project airtime. Even commenters here mention they haven’t heard of it until now.
- stingraycharles 11mo agoIt’s not the fact that it exists nor is written by AIs, it’s the intent that it should promote Musk’s personal (political) biases instead of seeking out the truth.
- refurb 11mo agoHow so? Musk isn’t writing the articles, Grok is. And as far as I’ve seen, Grok doesn’t spit out information all that different from the other LLMs.
- LexiMax 11mo ago> Musk isn’t writing the articles, Grok is. The AI is necessarily biased based on what it's trained on, and the prompt it uses. Most of the time, there is a plausible deniability at play, which is what tech oligarchs rely upon to shape your world. Thankfully in the case of Grok, we know for a material fact that it uses a biased prompt because Twitter users have tricked it into being repeated publicly.
- refurb 11mo agoI have not heard of the biased prompt and since prompts are constantly refined, how do you know it's still in use? But I found this analysis interest... https://www.promptfoo.dev/blog/grok-4-political-bias/ https://www.promptfoo.dev/blog/grok-4-political-bias/ *Our measurements show that: Grok is more right leaning than most other AIs, but it's still left of center. GPT 4.1 is the most left-leaning AI, both in its responses and in its judgement of others. Surprisingly, Grok is harsher on Musk's own companies than any other AI we tested. Grok is the most contrarian and the most likely to adopt maximalist positions - it tends to disagree when other AIs agree All popular AIs are left of center with Claude Opus 4 and Grok being closest to neutral.*
- tavavex 11mo ago> since prompts are constantly refined, how do you know it's still in use? That's an unusual amount of leniency. If someone was tuning their system in such a way, why would you give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe now they've resolved all of the issues and will never do it again? It's like buying a tabloid every week because "what if they changed their ways and now it will all be truthful?" The analysis you quoted doesn't really mean anything. I'm not sure how universally useful data can be extracted from having the models test themselves. But more importantly, all the models that were tested were made in the US, and it's extremely likely that from the selected data and the English-first approach, they would all skew towards an American perception of any issue. People from different corners of the world would identify the "center" as holding very different views from what you likely think. Also, being on the "center" isn't valuable unless you believe that being in the center is a merit in and of itself. If the best answer to an objective problem was a policy that's thought of as partisan, I would want a model to give me that correct partisan answer, instead of trying to both-sides everything or act like a contrarian whenever possible.
- refurb 11mo agoAssuming something is happening because of past actions is fine, it just isn’t proof. And I’m not sure what your criticisms of the test are. The models didn’t test themselves, they were tested based on their responses. And yes, it’s US based because that the intent - to see if there was a political bias based on the US political spectrum. And the “center” is the most desirable output. Responses have to land somewhere on the political spectrum. Center means a balance between right and left wing.
- smallmancontrov 11mo agoWhy does political center correspond to truth? Can you not think of a dozen examples of "both sides wrong"? Of "both sides right," where a vicious fight erupts over inconsequential details? The right wing of US politics has a better organized and funded propaganda arm (show me the left-wing equivalent of Roger Ailes and now Elon Musk) so we should expect truth-seeking to land us "left of center."
- UncleMeat 11mo agoDo other LLMs say that Musk is a better athlete than Lebron James and is more deserving of a lifetime achievement award at the Adult Video Network awards than Riley Reid?
- binary132 11mo agounlike the eminently objective and unbiased Wikipedia
- LexiMax 11mo agoConservapedia already exists if you care about the politics involved. Grokipedia is just a lazy low-effort vanity project of an unlikable billionaire. And that's a sentiment I've seen from conservatives and liberals. EDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that tech oligarchs once pretended to be progressive because it was the "in" thing to do. They are now pretending to be conservative because it's the "in" thing to do. But the truth is that they have no real morals and only believe in their own wealth and power. Even if you think their politics align with yours, it is only a temporary convenience, they will discard you as sure as they discarded liberals.
- binary132 11mo agoYou’re reading in a lot that I did not say. Wikipedia is not “truth-seeking”, which GP claimed, that’s all.
- mbirth 11mo agoDo you have any evidence that Grokipedia is actually biased? Most articles are merely their Wikipedia counterpart filtered through the Grok LLM.
- fragmede 11mo agoThe bit with mechahitler wasn't enough to convince you that the operators of the system are intentionally guiding it in a certain direction?
- rtkwe 11mo agoMusks own tweets and words should be more than enough: Wokipedia: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437 Cleaning up a "mountain of woke bullshit" models are trained on: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437 He hasn't been subtle in the goal of this rewriting of wikipedia.
- atonse 11mo agoI think the parent was asking you for evidence of articles with bias, though. Not evidence of Musk making fun of Wikipedia. I’m also curious to see any egregious violations where grok also dug its heels in a biased way when presented with an edit/correction with credible evidence. I’d love to see some evidence of it. (Not in a sarcastic way, I’m genuinely asking)
- croon 11mo agoIts' entire (stated) raison d'etre is that wikipedia is biased and wrong, so let's swap the question and instead ask for evidence of wikipedia sticking to wrong edits. If not, then grokipedia must exist for some other reason. Edit: Of course edit spamming/concerted efforts can affect wikipedia, but I'd rather that possibility than the entire thing be edit controlled by a person with an endless string of scrupulous behaviour.
- 11mo ago
- qcnguy 11mo agoThe explicit stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth. A lot of the internet doesn't do this. Wikipedia doesn't! As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if something is said by "authoritative sources" then it goes in, and something isn't then it doesn't, and what is actually true doesn't matter at all. They explicitly ban original research, even. But what gets blessed as authoritative, some backroom deals that always accept left wing sources and never right wing, even when the left wing sources have a long and objective history of fake news and other unreliability. It's just a bunch of MSNBC viewer memes about what's reliable, they don't have any objective system to determine it. Grokipedia's approach has the potential to be superior. It has a much more direct goal of truth seeking that bypasses the whole question of what authoritative means. Grok will do original research to establish what's true. And it can be systematically improved by tuning and prompting it to be better, whereas it often seems that Wikipedia's top contributors are top contributors because they relish the ability to be bad.
- card_zero 11mo agoNot "authoritative", reliable. From WP:Reliable_sources "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." You can see summaries of past debates about specific sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... If Grok is going to vet its sources, it will have to do a similar crowd-sourcing of opinion about them. The advantage of avoiding seeking truth is that it avoids an endless quest and interminable debate.
- qcnguy 11mo agoThose debates just show why Grokipedia is needed. Truth seeking is the opposite, it's when you demand crowdsourced consensus that debates become endless and stupid. Here's a cut and dried case: the BBC admitted recently to broadcasting faked video of a Trump speech. It wasn't a mistake and the lying was institutional in nature, i.e. an internal whistleblower tried to get it fixed and BBC management up to the top viewed it as OK to broadcast video they knew was fake. Even when it was revealed publicly, they still defended it with logic like "OK, maybe Trump didn't say that but it's the sort of thing he might have said". So the BBC can't be considered a reliable source, yet Wikipedia cites it all over the place. This problem was debated here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_495 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not... The discussion shows just how stupid Wikipedia has become. Highlights include: 1. Calling The Telegraph a tabloid (it's not) 2. Not reading the report ("What exactly was editted incorrectly?", "it's just an allegation") 3. Circular logic: "This just seems like mudslinging unless this is considered significant by less partisan publications" but their definition of "less partisan" means sources like the BBC, that just lied for partisan reasons. 4. Shooting the messenger for not being left wing enough. 5. Not fixing the problem: "Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC". Wikipedia is as broken as can be. It institutionally doesn't care that its "reliable sources" forge video evidence to manipulate politics. As long as left wing people turn up to defend it, there is no consensus, and nothing will change even if those people clearly don't even bother reading what happened. The death of Wikipedia will be slow, but it will be thoroughly deserved.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- deeth_starr_v 11mo agoIt’s bad faith. It’s ok to deride bad faith slop
- rexpop 11mo agoGrokipedia is a project motivated by personal grudges and political aims, rather than a neutral technical experiment. The broader context is an intensifying campaign against free and open access information by the world's richest man, ie a plutocrat. This is going to end lives. We cannot afford a plutocracy.
- Terr_ 11mo ago> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. Is others' negative-reaction to this sort of thing actually unusual... or is "weird" a rationalization for "seeing them do that makes me unhappy in this instance"? I think it's relatively normal (and positive) for people to be "hating on" something which is arguably unhelpful/lies/propaganda.
- jameslk 11mo agoYeah it’s pretty weird that there’s a need to write this article about it, when there’s plenty of other sites that are detestable if not more. And yet, this causes a Streisand effect. The site hasn’t been around for more than a couple of months and yet it keeps getting free airtime and backlinks from controversy of its existence. LLMs trained on the web pick up the utterances of the name all over the place and assign it some notoriety. And then, weirdly, people wonder why the site is showing up in their search/prompt results If I were an evil billionaire I guess I’d create/buy media companies just to talk negatively about myself and my projects because it’s apparently a very effective way to get attention. Just play two sides against each other who have an emotional urge to keep saying my name
- LexiMax 11mo ago> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. In isolation, Grokipedia is the vanity project of an unlikable billionare who wants to control narratives. But I'd argue that there's more to it than just Musk. Zoom out a bit, and I think there's growing populist resentment against tech oligarchs from both sides of the aisle. People are sick and tired of the enshittification of the internet, social media, and anything with a screen. They also don't appreciate the idea of their jobs being replaced by AI when most people are already struggling to make ends meet. So yeah, it's not just anger at the particulars of Grokipedia, people are just fed up with tech oligarchs in general. You could probably zoom out a little further and see similar resentment against of other wealthy elites for a myriad of other reaons, but suffice to say, Musk has good company among the ranks of other ghouls like Ellison, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Bezos, Andreessen and Nadella.
- rtkwe 11mo agoWell Musk has said his goal is to use this edited biased version as part of the training data for Grok to "eliminate bias" in the training data because Grok keeps contradicting him. The problems isn't the page in isolation it's the project it's a part of.
- michaelhoney 11mo agoIt's not some random experiment. I you made it, sure. But when _Elon Musk_ does it, for his own stupid reasons, it's important that we understand and push back against it.
- tastyface 11mo agoImagine the shittiest person you know creating an encyclopedia filled with slop tailored to his biases and "insights", and then the tech community somehow, unfathomably, looking at this turd of a product as an actual authoritative source or "fun experiment". The roots of this tree are poisoned.
- rsynnott 11mo agoI mean, it's yet more misleading LLM spam. At this point, many people are, correctly, sick of this nonsense.
- danirod 11mo ago> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. Now let's replace in this sentence the word Grokipedia with Wikipedia and ask the same question to Musk and to his followers: The need to hate on Wikipedia is weird to me. It's another site on the web.
- insane_dreamer 11mo ago> it's another site on the web funded by the wealthiest man in the world who is aggressively pushing his own personal agendas, willing to spend $$$$ to do so, and controls one of the most widely used social networks so no, it's not "another site on the web"
- cosmicgadget 11mo agoA -pedia isn't "the internet", there are different expectations. It's like going to a .gov site and seeing political banners blaming the party not in power. Or, as an engineer, it offends me that someone would look at a lossy compression algorithm and choose the output as their ground truth.