Tim Bray on Grokipedia
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Tim Bray on Grokipedia
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Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#2Why give it oxygen?
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#3Why give it oxygen?
It's great idea to share knowledge bases collected and curated by LLMs.
Amazing that Musk did it first. (Although it was suggested to him as part of an interview a month before release).
These systems are very good at finding obscure references that were overlooked by mere mortals.
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#4Why give it oxygen?
To play devil's advocate: Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter, contrary to popular conception. Elon keeps trying to tweak its system prompt to make it less effective at that, but Grokipedia was worth an initial look from me out of curiosity. It took me 10 seconds to realize it was ideologically-motivated garbage and significantly more right-biased than Wikipedia is left-biased.
(Unfortunately, Reply-Grok may have been successfully partially lobotomized for the long term, now. At the time of writing, if you ask grok.com about the 2020 election it says Biden won and Trump's fraud claims are not substantiated and have no merit. If you @grok in a tweet it now says Trump's claims of fraud have significant merit, when previously it did not. Over the past few days I've seen it place way too much charity in right-wing framings in other instances, as well.)
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#5Why give it oxygen?
It's great idea to share knowledge bases collected and curated by LLMs. Amazing that Musk did it first. (Although it was suggested to him as part of an interview a month before release). These systems are very good at finding obscure references that were overlooked by mere mortals.
"It's great idea to share knowledge bases collected and curated by LLMs"
Is it though?
LLMs are great at answering questions based on information you make available to them, especially if you have the instincts and skill to spot when they are likely to make mistakes and to fact-check key details yourself.
That doesn't mean that using them to build a knowledge base itself is a good idea! We need reliable, verified knowledge bases that LLMs can make use-of.
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#6We may joke about it, but the fact is that it's releasing dumb ideas like this that you sometimes get masterpieces. Maybe this one is really just one of the bad ones, but eventually Elon will have some good ones just like he already has.
And a lot of us would be better off releasing our dumb ideas too. The world has a lot of issues and if all you do is talk down and don't try to fix anything yourself. Maybe it's time to get off the web a little and do something else.
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#7Dead Internet Theory is no longer a theory huh?
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#8We may joke about it, but the fact is that it's releasing dumb ideas like this that you sometimes get masterpieces. Maybe this one is really just one of the bad ones, but eventually Elon will have some good ones just like he already has. And a lot of us would be better off releasing our dumb ideas too. The world has a lot of issues and if all you do is talk down and don't try to fix anything yourself. Maybe it's time…
Not even being snarky, but I can't recall a single good idea he had.
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#9Why give it oxygen?
To play devil's advocate: Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter, contrary to popular conception. Elon keeps trying to tweak its system prompt to make it less effective at that, but Grokipedia was worth an initial look from me out of curiosity. It took me 10 seconds to realize it was ideologically-motivated garbage and significa…
The problem of debunking right-wing misinformation is that it doesn't seem to matter. The consumers of that misinformation want it and those of us who think it's bad for society already know that its garbage.
It feels like we've reached Peak Stupidity but it's clear it can (and likely will) get much worse with AI videos.
Re: Tim Bray on Grokipedia
#10We may joke about it, but the fact is that it's releasing dumb ideas like this that you sometimes get masterpieces. Maybe this one is really just one of the bad ones, but eventually Elon will have some good ones just like he already has. And a lot of us would be better off releasing our dumb ideas too. The world has a lot of issues and if all you do is talk down and don't try to fix anything yourself. Maybe it's time…
I know the world sucks, but "fuck it, let's make it worse" is a tough sell for anybody not already onboard. You're better off just doing it, rather than trying to convince others to also do it.