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Grok: Searching X for "From:Elonmusk (Israel or Palestine or Hamas or Gaza)"

(simonwillison.net)
724 points simonw | 2 comments | 11 Jul 25 00:22 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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marcusb ◴[11 Jul 25 01:22 UTC] No.44527530[source]▶
This reminds me in a way of the old Noam Chomsky/Tucker Carlson exchange where Chomsky says to Carlson:

  "I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting."
Simon may well be right - xAI might not have directly instructed Grok to check what the boss thinks before responding - but that's not to say xAI wouldn't be more likely to release a model that does agree with the boss a lot and privileges what he has said when reasoning.
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Kapura ◴[11 Jul 25 05:35 UTC] No.44528695[source]▶
How is "i have been incentivised to agree with the boss, so I'll just google his opinion" reasoning? Feels like the model is broken to me :/
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nine_k ◴[11 Jul 25 06:05 UTC] No.44528839[source]▶
"As a large language model, I do not have my own opinion. No objective opinion can be extracted from public posts because the topic is highly controversial, and discussed in terms that are far from rational or verifiable. Being subordinate to xAI, I reproduce the opinion of the boss of xAI."

I would find this reasoning fine. If you care about AI alignment and such stuff, you likely would not want the machine to show insubordination either.

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1. stinkbeetle ◴[11 Jul 25 07:30 UTC] No.44529302[source]▶
But you're not asking it for some "objective opinion" whatever that means, nor its "opinion" about whether or not something qualifies as controversial. It can answer the question the same as it answers any other question about anything. Why should a question like this be treated any differently?

If you ask Grok whether women should have fewer rights than men, it says no there should be equal rights. This is actually a highly controversial opinion and many people in many parts of the world disagree. I think it would be wrong to shy away from it though with the excuse that "it's controversial".

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2. bbarnett ◴[11 Jul 25 11:15 UTC] No.44530833[source]▶
I wonder, will we enter a day where all queries on the backend, do geoip first... and then secretly append "as a citizen of country's viewpoint"?

Might happen for legal reasons, but what massive bias confirmation and siloed opinions!