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    Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

    (www.nytimes.com)
    539 points donohoe | 11 comments | 09 Jul 25 14:52 UTC | HN request time: 1.765s | source | bottom
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    steveBK123[dead post] ◴[09 Jul 25 16:10 UTC] No.44511769[source]▶
    [flagged]
    1. ceejayoz ◴[09 Jul 25 16:22 UTC] No.44511884[source]▶
    The other LLMs don't have a "disbelieve reputable sources" unsafety prompt added at the owner's instructions.
    replies(2): >>44511947 #>>44512590 #
    2. steveBK123 ◴[09 Jul 25 16:27 UTC] No.44511947[source]▶
    It's gotta be more than that too though. Maybe training data other companies won't touch? Hidden prompt they aren't publishing? Etc.

    Clearly Musk has put his hand on the scale in multiple ways.

    replies(4): >>44512280 #>>44512305 #>>44513674 #>>44515749 #
    3. overfeed ◴[09 Jul 25 16:54 UTC] No.44512280[source]▶
    > Maybe training data other companies won't touch

    That's a bingo. 3 weeks ago, Musk invited[1] X users to Microsoft-Tay[2] Grok by having them share share "divisive facts", then presumably fed the over 10,000 responses into the training/fine-tuning data set.

    1. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1936493967320953090

    2. In 2016, Microsoft decided to let its Tay chatbot interact, and learn from Twitter users, and was praising Hitler in short order. They did it twice too, before shutting it down permanently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

    replies(1): >>44516377 #
    4. thrance ◴[09 Jul 25 16:56 UTC] No.44512305[source]▶
    I think they just told grok to favor conservative "sources" and it became "mechahitler" as the result.
    5. neuroelectron ◴[09 Jul 25 17:18 UTC] No.44512590[source]▶
    Tbf, it must be difficult for LLMs to align all the WWII propaganda that's still floating around.
    replies(1): >>44513520 #
    6. Macha ◴[09 Jul 25 18:47 UTC] No.44513520[source]▶
    Given the source of training data is primarily the internet, and not say scanned propaganda posters in museums, I'd have to imagine all the analyses or things attributed to the impact of world war 2 significantly outnumber uncritical publications of ww2 propaganda in the training sets.
    replies(1): >>44525261 #
    7. peab ◴[09 Jul 25 19:03 UTC] No.44513674[source]▶
    I think it's more so that they push changes quickly without exhaustively testing. Compare that to Google, who sits on a model for years for fear of hurting their reputation, or OpenAI and Anthropic who extensively red teams models
    replies(1): >>44515043 #
    8. steveBK123 ◴[09 Jul 25 21:48 UTC] No.44515043{3}[source]▶
    Why does Grok keep "failing" in the same directional way if its just a testing issue?
    9. bikezen ◴[09 Jul 25 23:27 UTC] No.44515749[source]▶
    It was starting N.... chains yesterday along with several other 4chan memes, so its definitely ingested a dataset consisting of at least 4chan posts that any sane company wouldn't touch with a 1000ft pole.
    10. epakai ◴[10 Jul 25 01:34 UTC] No.44516377{3}[source]▶
    That tweet seems like the bigger story.

    I've seen lots of deflection saying Yaccarino chose to retire prior to Grok/MechaHitler, but the tweet predates that.

    Even more deflection about how chatbots are easy to bait into saying weird things, but you don't need to bait when it has been specifically trained on it.

    All of this was intentional. Musk is removing more of the mask, and he doesn't need Yaccarino to comfort advertisers any more.

    11. neuroelectron ◴[10 Jul 25 20:34 UTC] No.44525261{3}[source]▶
    What