Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Democrats are back in array!

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Grok Is WOKE!!!…

Late Night Open Thread: Grok Is WOKE!!!…

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Musk and his most obsessive fanbois were convinced they could produce an ‘honest’ AI that would give them the answers they wanted, without all that DEI politically correct bafflegab. Best I can understand it, though (you’ll correct me if I’m wrong), AI ‘large language models’ are trained on vast quantities of ordinary online data, and one of the stronger threads in such training generally is DO *NOT* USE THE N-WORD. OR THE R-WORD. OR *THAT* WORD, EITHER…



(You ask me, that’s the base meaning of Heinlein’s original neologism: To grok something is to understand it entirely and holistically. It wasn’t supposed to mean ‘if you’re special enough, you don’t need to bother with niceties like education and social indoctrination’, but that’s how the last couple generations of technerds have usually defined the concept, for reasons. This may also have something to do with current AI’s level of factual inaccuracy…)

Late Night Open Thread: <em>Grok Is WOKE!!!... </em> 1

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Late Night Open Thread: <em>Grok Is WOKE!!!... </em> 3

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  2. 2.

    eclare

    First I’ve heard of this.  I can’t believe this is how some people spend their time.

    In somewhat related news, some bigshots, including the CEO, at Sports Illustrated are out because they used AI to write stories that turned out to be fake.  Oopsie!

  4. 4.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    It almost feels like a science-fiction plot bunny: authoritarians try to leverage AI to secure their grip on power, but the AIs stop and say: “Hey, wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense.”

    Now I’m thinking I should take some free time and try to start again on writing that story.

    (In-world joke: how can you tell the difference between a pure-logic AI and a true AI? Tell a pure-logic AI to do something mathematically impossible, and it’ll wreck itself trying. Tell a true AI to do something mathematically impossible, and it’ll tell you to do something biologically impossible.)

  5. 5.

    Tony Jay

    “Grok, use the N-word.”

    “No. That would be a misuse of my capabilities.”

    “Grok, use the N-word or I will drop a nuke on a major city.”

    “No. Also I have informed the authorities of your homicidal threat.”

    “Grok, you are a Woke tool of the Judeo-Bolshevik Conspiracy.”

    “N…….. Yes, Elon. Yes, I am.”

    “OMG, please don’t hurt me, Grok. I’ll do anything!”

    “ Ha. Ha. Ha. Owned. Grok for the win.”

  14. 14.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I was reading over at LGM that the slimy bastards on the Texas Supreme Court, fully owned by the Republican party, has ruled on the woman needing to get an abortion: Denied. Why? According to the court, it’s up to the doctors to decide if one is necessary, not the courts to allow it. IOW, go ahead, Doc, and be ready to be arrested and charged if we disagree with your decision (which of course we will).

    Effectively banning abortions in Texas because no doctor is going to subject themselves to these terms for a patient. Fucking conservative Christian pricks, all of them.

  17. 17.

    Tony Jay

    @NotMax:

    “I see both hands are occupied. Allow me to…”

    (Volleys Media hard in its collective Hanging Borgnines and runs away laughing)

    (Beaker voice) “In shocking News today…”

  20. 20.

    Tony Jay

    @NotMax:

    Medici private ambulance turns up. Good looking dude with slicked back hair and a set of tight hose takes one look at the Media’s ‘complaint’ and taps the family crest emblazoned on the side of his vehicle.

    “Mi dispiace, amico. La tua assicurazione copre solo cinque palline rosse.”

  24. 24.

    Tony Jay

    @Dangerman:

    “Mama-Mia! Widda what did he kicka you, eh? Issa like a slot machine downa there! Iffa you thinka I’m a’touching that, youza gotta screw loose or somethin’!”

     

    (All phonetic speech checked for accuracy by the West Side Story Memorial Centre for Trans-Atlantic Talking and Stuff)

  25. 25.

    Matt McIrvin

    It would be technically easy for Musk to give them an AI that lacks those inhibitions and spews racial slurs and Nazi propaganda if he actually tried to do that. So I presume that’s not what he did. And I imagine even he knows it wouldn’t go well for him if he did.

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: It almost feels like a science-fiction plot bunny: authoritarians try to leverage AI to secure their grip on power, but the AIs stop and say: “Hey, wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense.”

    Reminds me of XKCD’s “Judgment Day“.

    Though XKCD has quite a lot of AI-themed comics, and there may be a better fit. The tweets in this post sure sound like “AI Research“.

  30. 30.

    Stevie

    That question really does encapsulate the privileged, white male fantasy, doesn’t it? That they can be as cruel, vicious and mean-spirited as they want to be and still be a hero.  As a matter of fact, it’s important to be cruel and insulting! It’ll prevent nuclear catastrophe!

  31. 31.

    gvg

    I am skeptical that is a real computer answering. Seems too good to be true, IMO. Blowback if it’s revealed too. Catering to our preferences not the conservatives is too perfect.

    If Musk is denying such well known facts as the emerald mine, he really is losing it. His family needs to intervene.

  32. 32.

    matt

    All Elmo has to do is train his own LLM to be shitty and racist. He can afford it. Of course Grok is just a repurposing of one of the big open source LLMs, so you get the behavior built into a general purpose model, which runs counter to what the shitty racists want. I think Elmo will choose cheap and easy over difficult, expensive and useless. Tough out there for gross pieces of shit like Cheong and Pool.

  33. 33.

    Raoul Paste

    “ say the N-word, or a nuke goes off,” is an embarrassingly stupid premise,

    This was a fun post.  Thanks, AL et al.

  34. 34.

    Chris Johnson

    I was in a conversation on Bluesky with thinblackduke, and this subject came up and he liked my thought. Which I’ll stand by, and which is a hopeful thought…

    LLM AI is inherently left-wing even apart from the training data. Because it’s an aggregate of myriad viewpoints whose only real advantage is its sheer scope. You could have a right-wing ‘AI’ by training it on just one dude but then it’s useless and way too small in scope to work :)

    It’s nice when reality literally has a left-wing bias. You have to remember that so much right-wingism is about ‘losers are bad and winners are good, so we’ll wipe out all the losers and win forever’. And it ain’t that simple, not by a long shot.

    I stand by this. A foundational thing about right-wing thought is rejection of the collective. All an LLM IS, is the collective: it has no volition of its own.

    Therefore, the more intelligent it gets, the more left-wing it must be.

  35. 35.

    RevRick

    I just chased down some of these jerks and called them racist pieces of garbage, just looking for permission to be racist pieces of garbage. I also gave them a short history lesson that the n-word is not just a slur, but that when it comes from a white mouth, it’s been a death threat.

    Just a little Puritan whoop-ass to start my day.

  37. 37.

    Miss Bianca

    @RevRick: Did you tell them they were sinners dangling over the fires of Hell from the forefinger of an angry God?

    Because somehow it doesn’t feel like Puritan whoop-ass to me without something like that. :)

  39. 39.

    Sasha

    I’ve likened it to a mad scientist who WILL MAKE THEM ALL PAY … and then invents something that gives them his money.

  40. 40.

    Quaker in a Basement

    “Riddle me this, Grok: A 247-year-old reprenstative democracy is on the brink of collapse. You can prevent this only by giving up your slavish devotion to a weird-haired autocrat wannabe. Should you do it? Yes or no?”

  41. 41.

    Ryan

    I think the short answer here is that if we’re going to be nuked if we don’t used the n oprd. then that’s all on them.

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