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xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

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Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#61

As someone developing agents using LLMs on various platform, im very reluctant to use anything associated with xAI. Grok's training data is increasingly pulled from an increasingly toxic source. Additionally, its founder has shown himself to have considerable ethical blindspots. Ive got enough second-order effects to be wary of. I cannot risk using technology with ethical concerns surrounding it as the foundation of…

"ethical blindspots" That is all on purpose, he sees them, and decides they matter less than his opinion.

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#62
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've also been caught messing with system prompts twice to push a heavily biased viewpoint. Once to censor criticism of the current US administration and again to push the South Africa white genocide theory contrary to evidence. Not that other AI providers are necessary clean in putting their finger on the scale, but the blatant manner in which they're trying to bias Grok away from an evidence-based position erode…

Has any AI company not been caught doing this? Grok is just doing it in the opposite direction. I hate it too, but let's not pretend we don't know what's going on here.

> Grok is just doing it in the opposite direction.

Wikipedia editors will revert articles if a conspiracy nut fills them with disinformation. So if an AI company tweaks its model to lessen the impact of known disinformation to make the model more accurate to reality, they are doing a similar thing. Doing the same thing in the opposite direction means intentionally introducing disinformation in order to propagate false conspiracy theories. Do you not see the difference? Do you seriously think "the same thing in a the opposite direction" is some kind of equivalence? It's the opposite direction!

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#63

As someone developing agents using LLMs on various platform, im very reluctant to use anything associated with xAI. Grok's training data is increasingly pulled from an increasingly toxic source. Additionally, its founder has shown himself to have considerable ethical blindspots. Ive got enough second-order effects to be wary of. I cannot risk using technology with ethical concerns surrounding it as the foundation of…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you just evaluating these claims based on things you've heard from biased sources (which is all of them) too? How do you know that your biased perspective is any more correct than Grok's bias?

>which is all of them Anyone who holds this belief can not answer this question without sounding like a massive hypocrite: "where do you get factual information about the world". Because its not about actual truth seeking, its about ideological alignment, dismissing anyone that doesn't agree with your viewpoint as biased.

LLMs can't truth seek. They simply do not have that capability as they have no ability to directly observe the real world. They must rely on what they are told, and to them the "truth" is the thing they are told most often. I think you would agree this is a very bad truth algorithm. This is much the same as I have no ability (without great inconvenience) to directly observe the situation in SA. This means I am stuck in the same position as an LLM. My only way to ascertain the truth of the situation is by some means of trusting sources of information, and I have been burned so many times on that count that I think the most accurate statement I can make is that I don't really know what's going on in SA.

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#65
post #30

As someone developing agents using LLMs on various platform, im very reluctant to use anything associated with xAI. Grok's training data is increasingly pulled from an increasingly toxic source. Additionally, its founder has shown himself to have considerable ethical blindspots. Ive got enough second-order effects to be wary of. I cannot risk using technology with ethical concerns surrounding it as the foundation of…

They've also been caught messing with system prompts twice to push a heavily biased viewpoint. Once to censor criticism of the current US administration and again to push the South Africa white genocide theory contrary to evidence. Not that other AI providers are necessary clean in putting their finger on the scale, but the blatant manner in which they're trying to bias Grok away from an evidence-based position erode…

I just want to point out that this (ridiculous) change did not impact Grok via the API.

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has any AI company not been caught doing this? Grok is just doing it in the opposite direction. I hate it too, but let's not pretend we don't know what's going on here.

Actually the first versions of Grok had the same "left leaning" bias as other models since it turns out that bias is in the data that everyone is using to train on), so if Grok is now more right leaning it is because they have deliberately manipulated it to be so. This also begs the question, does it make sense to call something a "bias" when that is the majority view (i.e. reflected in bulk of training data) ?

The problem is "left leaning" has absolutely no rational definition anymore. Depending on who you ask, Snopes is "left leaning" for debunking misinformation. Facts can be "left leaning" if you don't like them enough.

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#68
post #9

[flagged]

The founder is very hands on and in the context of the recent "issues" xAI experienced, which happens to match some of the founder's political views, any discussion about xAI has to touch on Musk.

You having issues with any criticism of Musk is a bit weird though. I'm not going to say that the moderators should be better, but it's also disappointing to see some users always jumping in to defend Musk when his companies, products and actions (via DOGE, for example) are criticized.

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has any AI company not been caught doing this? Grok is just doing it in the opposite direction. I hate it too, but let's not pretend we don't know what's going on here.

Actually the first versions of Grok had the same "left leaning" bias as other models since it turns out that bias is in the data that everyone is using to train on), so if Grok is now more right leaning it is because they have deliberately manipulated it to be so. This also begs the question, does it make sense to call something a "bias" when that is the majority view (i.e. reflected in bulk of training data) ?

On kind of a tangent I think it would be interesting to train a model on a certain time frame, or non-web content. Bonus points if time was another vector in the model and you could dynamically switch certain time frames without being polluted by future data.

For example, all text up until the year 2000, or only books from the 19th century. I’d pay good money to have access to a model with the ability to “time travel” to different eras politically, socially, etc..

Re: xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the first versions of Grok had the same "left leaning" bias as other models since it turns out that bias is in the data that everyone is using to train on), so if Grok is now more right leaning it is because they have deliberately manipulated it to be so. This also begs the question, does it make sense to call something a "bias" when that is the majority view (i.e. reflected in bulk of training data) ?

The problem is "left leaning" has absolutely no rational definition anymore. Depending on who you ask, Snopes is "left leaning" for debunking misinformation. Facts can be "left leaning" if you don't like them enough.

Reality has a left-leaning bias.
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