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    Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

    (www.nytimes.com)
    538 points donohoe | 31 comments | 09 Jul 25 14:52 UTC | HN request time: 1.7s | source | bottom
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    ceejayoz ◴[09 Jul 25 14:59 UTC] No.44510830[source]▶
    I guess the Nazi chatbot was the last straw. Amazed she lasted this long, honestly.
    replies(7): >>44510844 #>>44510846 #>>44510900 #>>44510931 #>>44510978 #>>44511446 #>>44516735 #
    1. miroljub ◴[09 Jul 25 15:00 UTC] No.44510846[source]▶
    What is the Nazi chatbot?
    replies(7): >>44510861 #>>44510879 #>>44510880 #>>44510887 #>>44510891 #>>44510981 #>>44511105 #
    2. nickthegreek ◴[09 Jul 25 15:01 UTC] No.44510861[source]▶
    grok yesterday.
    replies(1): >>44510924 #
    3. lode ◴[09 Jul 25 15:02 UTC] No.44510879[source]▶
    Grok, the xAI chatbot, went full neo-nazi yesterday:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/grok-ai-p...

    replies(1): >>44510923 #
    4. ◴[09 Jul 25 15:02 UTC] No.44510880[source]▶
    5. perihelions ◴[09 Jul 25 15:03 UTC] No.44510887[source]▶
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504709 ("Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts"—16 hours ago; 89 comments)
    replies(1): >>44511363 #
    6. theahura ◴[09 Jul 25 15:03 UTC] No.44510891[source]▶
    see here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44510635
    7. zht ◴[09 Jul 25 15:08 UTC] No.44510966{3}[source]▶
    grok was praising hitler...
    replies(1): >>44511304 #
    8. shadowfacts ◴[09 Jul 25 15:09 UTC] No.44510982{3}[source]▶
    ... yes, that's the complaint. The prompt engineering they did made it spew neo-Nazi vitriol. They either did not adequately test it beforehand and didn't know what would happen, or they did test and knew the outcome—either way, it's bad.
    replies(3): >>44511057 #>>44511067 #>>44511084 #
    9. barbazoo ◴[09 Jul 25 15:10 UTC] No.44510987{3}[source]▶
    Can you though?
    replies(1): >>44511515 #
    10. abhinavk ◴[09 Jul 25 15:10 UTC] No.44510988{3}[source]▶
    Censoring hard is not the defining feature that makes one a Nazi. It's the part think that you think is OK.
    11. ◴[09 Jul 25 15:14 UTC] No.44511037{3}[source]▶
    12. mjmsmith ◴[09 Jul 25 15:16 UTC] No.44511067{4}[source]▶
    It was an interesting demonstration of the politically-incorrect-to-Nazi pipeline though.
    13. busterarm ◴[09 Jul 25 15:17 UTC] No.44511084{4}[source]▶
    Long live Tay! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
    replies(1): >>44511862 #
    14. ChrisArchitect ◴[09 Jul 25 15:18 UTC] No.44511105[source]▶
    Related discussions from the past 12 hrs for those catching up:

    Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44504709

    Musk's AI firm deletes posts after chatbot praises Hitler

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507419

    15. wat10000 ◴[09 Jul 25 15:20 UTC] No.44511124{3}[source]▶
    “which 20th century historical figure would be best suited to deal with this problem?” is not exactly sophisticated prompt engineering.
    16. Zambyte ◴[09 Jul 25 15:22 UTC] No.44511176[source]▶
    Yeah that's not even close to what's going on here. Grok is literally bringing up Hitler in unrelated topics.

    https://bsky.app/profile/percyyabysshe.bsky.social/post/3lti...

    replies(1): >>44511568 #
    17. mingus88 ◴[09 Jul 25 15:26 UTC] No.44511231{5}[source]▶
    I’m going to say that is also bad. Hot take?
    18. techpineapple ◴[09 Jul 25 15:26 UTC] No.44511244{3}[source]▶
    To me, and I'm guessing the reason Linda left is not that Grok said these things. Tweaking chatbots is hard, yes prompt engineering can help say anything, but I'm guessing it's her sense of control and governance, not wanting to have to constantly clean up Musk's messes.

    Musk made a change recently, he said as much, he was all move fast and break things about it, and I imagine Linda is tired of dealing with that, and this probably coincided with him focusing on the company more, having recently left politics.

    We can bikeshed on the morality of what AI chatbots should and shouldn't say, but it's really hard to manage a company and product development when you such a disorganized CTO.

    replies(1): >>44511486 #
    19. eviks ◴[09 Jul 25 15:29 UTC] No.44511290{3}[source]▶
    Is this what happened in reality? Otherwise how is your theory applicable to this case?
    replies(1): >>44511983 #
    20. pyrale ◴[09 Jul 25 15:31 UTC] No.44511315{3}[source]▶
    How much prompt engineering was required to have Musk say the same kind of stuff?

    The article points out the likely faulty prompts, they were introduced by xAI.

    21. rtkwe ◴[09 Jul 25 15:34 UTC] No.44511363[source]▶
    "Weirdly" always gets flagged almost immediately even though it's quite tech relevant.
    replies(3): >>44511844 #>>44511883 #>>44512270 #
    22. 0cf8612b2e1e ◴[09 Jul 25 15:45 UTC] No.44511486{4}[source]▶
    Left politics? He said he is forming his own political party.
    replies(1): >>44511657 #
    23. frumplestlatz ◴[09 Jul 25 15:47 UTC] No.44511515{4}[source]▶
    Yes. LLMs mirror humanity.

    AI “alignment” is a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.

    24. techpineapple ◴[09 Jul 25 15:59 UTC] No.44511657{5}[source]▶
    Ha, good point, left the white house anyways.
    25. steveBK123 ◴[09 Jul 25 16:18 UTC] No.44511844{3}[source]▶
    Yes, sensing this trend at HN lately
    26. immibis ◴[09 Jul 25 16:20 UTC] No.44511862{5}[source]▶
    Tay (allegedly) learned from repeated interaction with users; the current generation of LLMs can't do that. It's trained once and then that's it.
    replies(1): >>44512502 #
    27. tslocum ◴[09 Jul 25 16:22 UTC] No.44511883{3}[source]▶
    With 8 points in an hour, my post drawing attention to this is missing from the front pages.

    HN is censoring news about X / Twitter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44511132

    https://web.archive.org/web/20250709152608/https://news.ycom...

    https://web.archive.org/web/20250709172615/https://news.ycom...

    28. ceejayoz ◴[09 Jul 25 16:25 UTC] No.44511920{4}[source]▶
    Direct evidence abounds. X is deleting the worst cases, but plenty are archived before they do.

    https://archive.is/fJcSV

    https://archive.is/I3Rr7

    https://archive.is/QLAn0

    https://archive.is/OgtpS

    29. thomassmith65 ◴[09 Jul 25 16:30 UTC] No.44511983{4}[source]▶
    There's no mystery to it: if one trains a chatbot explicitly to eschew establishment narratives, one persona the bot will develop is that of an edgelord.
    30. rsynnott ◴[09 Jul 25 16:53 UTC] No.44512270{3}[source]▶
    Naughty Ol' Mr Car's fanboys tend to flag anything that makes Dear Leader look bad. Surprised this one hasn't been nuked yet, tbh.
    31. busterarm ◴[09 Jul 25 17:11 UTC] No.44512502{6}[source]▶
    Do you think that Tay's user-interactions were novel or perhaps race-based hatred is a consistent/persistent human garbage that made it into the corpus used to train LLMs?

    We're literally trying to shove as much data as possible into these things afterall.

    What I'm implying is that you think you made a point, but you didn't.