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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   30058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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In a bit of unambiguously 21st century news, some tweaks to Grok, xAI's chatbot have had it do particularly interesting things today including

This may make minor news because Musk is in trouble, on the other hand all the people who really, really hate him have their pants on fire like Europeans, von der Leyen is getting impeached, they're actually scared of Russia / China so it might just blow over, the grid is getting worse and is going to keep getting worse due to Green energy mandates.

I'm even suspecting Musk deliberately told them to relax the guardrails for some reason. Probably .. publicity?

Update: site addresses the issues

We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved.

EDIT2

apparently this prompt change may be the culprit

EDIT3

Stancil went on local TV news to complain about the ERP grok made. (video included)

EDIT4:

There's quite reasonable suspicion this 'malfunction' was engineered by Nikita Bier

I continue to be baffled that anybody takes these bots seriously, or sees Grok or xAI or their competitors as anything other than nonsense generators. A slight change to the flavour of the nonsense doesn't really change my opinion any. Perhaps it moves me in the direction of thinking that Musk is childish and temperamental, but I already thought that, so it doesn't make much difference.

...as anything other than nonsense generators.

As opposed to the other sources you can go to, which are...?

I am grading on a curve, an LLMs look pretty good when you compare them to traditional sources. It's even better if you restrict yourself to free+fast sources like Google search, (pseudo-)social media like Reddit/StackOverflow, or specific websites.

I'm not sure how that helps, since any given LLM's output is based on traditional sources like Google or the open internet. It would be quicker and easier for me to just Google the thing directly. Why waste my time asking an LLM and then Googling the LLM's results to confirm?

When you find something via Google, do you immediately and unconditionally trust it? I don't, because Google's results are full of nonsense. In response, I've developed google-fu to both refine my queries and judge the results. The same goes for every other source there is, from physical libraries to subject-specific Discord servers.

Do I compare LLM output to Google results? Sure, but that's nothing special. Comparing what you find in different sources is a pretty basic tactic.

LLMs are part of a complete breakfast research strategy, and a pretty good one at that.

When you find something via Google, do you immediately and unconditionally trust it?

Certainly not. When I research something I look at multiple different sources, make judgements about which ones I find the most trustworthy and credible, and synthesise a judgement.

If I ask an LLM about anything, I need to do the research that I would have done even if I had not asked the LLM. The LLM adds no value. It does not shorten the research process, nor improve what I find by showing me any hints about where to look.

Why not just look at it's sources? That's what I do. The whole point is that it filters through a ton of websites to find sources for the thing you're looking for. Then you can check it's sources to make sure it isn't pulling random garbage.

Just look at it's source for the information. Even better, when telling it to look something up, tell it what sources you like. It won't be perfectly adherent to them, but it will focus on them.

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