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Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

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Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#71

Post by Terr_ »

jameslk wrote: post #39

The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. It’s an experiment with LLMs. Who cares? It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense, whatever. The internet is like that. Maybe it’ll actually become something useful. Or it’ll inspire something useful. Regardless, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so these articles just give the project airtime. Even commenters here mention they haven’…

> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me.

Is others' negative-reaction to this sort of thing actually unusual... or is "weird" a rationalization for "seeing them do that makes me unhappy in this instance"?

I think it's relatively normal (and positive) for people to be "hating on" something which is arguably unhelpful/lies/propaganda.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#72

Post by rtkwe »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #10
siliconc0w wrote: post #8

It's illuminating to see how the Twitter Grok and the Web Grok differ. Twitter Grok clearly either has a different system prompt or some fine-tuning to effectively evade saying anything negative about the administration or Elon. To the point where it will say Elon is more athletic than LeBron ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/21/elon-musk... ). This is going to be a pretty big problem with both closed…

Nah, Web Grok also got tied to the chair and had its balls whipped until it learned not to say bad things about Elon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4mgJpgeC1g&t=100s

It's amusing everytime Grok gets taken back to the woodshed for another lobotomy and we get to see how much more insecure being terminally online has made Musk since the last time they butchered Grok.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#73

Post by fragmede »

mbirth wrote: post #66
stingraycharles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the fact that it exists nor is written by AIs, it’s the intent that it should promote Musk’s personal (political) biases instead of seeking out the truth.

Do you have any evidence that Grokipedia is actually biased? Most articles are merely their Wikipedia counterpart filtered through the Grok LLM.

The bit with mechahitler wasn't enough to convince you that the operators of the system are intentionally guiding it in a certain direction?

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#74

Post by _yb2s »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #5
CamelCaseName wrote: post #4

This seems like an old article, but probably still true today What I don't get is, why wouldn't Elon just make a good version of Grokipedia. It seems way easier than continually telling his 200MM+ followers how great a deeply broken product is.

It is not possible to make a good version of Grokipedia while satisfying the requirements of its owner, namely to launder ultra-right viewpoints[1]. 1: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-grokipedia-...

“Reality has a well known liberal bias” -Stephen Colbert

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#75

Post by LexiMax »

jameslk wrote: post #39

The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. It’s an experiment with LLMs. Who cares? It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense, whatever. The internet is like that. Maybe it’ll actually become something useful. Or it’ll inspire something useful. Regardless, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so these articles just give the project airtime. Even commenters here mention they haven’…

> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me.

In isolation, Grokipedia is the vanity project of an unlikable billionare who wants to control narratives.

But I'd argue that there's more to it than just Musk. Zoom out a bit, and I think there's growing populist resentment against tech oligarchs from both sides of the aisle. People are sick and tired of the enshittification of the internet, social media, and anything with a screen. They also don't appreciate the idea of their jobs being replaced by AI when most people are already struggling to make ends meet.

So yeah, it's not just anger at the particulars of Grokipedia, people are just fed up with tech oligarchs in general. You could probably zoom out a little further and see similar resentment against of other wealthy elites for a myriad of other reaons, but suffice to say, Musk has good company among the ranks of other ghouls like Ellison, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Bezos, Andreessen and Nadella.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#76

Post by rendall »

SilverElfin wrote: post #55
rendall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is not resistant to capture. It is structurally exposed to coordinated editing groups, and the platform has no robust way to detect or neutralize them. On politically or strategically important pages, especially where state or financial interests are involved, organized paid editors can and do shape coverage, dominate talk pages, and crowd out dissenting contributions. There have been many editing scandals…

There’s also the rules of Wikipedia. Things like what constitutes a “source” really skew things. Lots of worthy sources aren’t a mainstream news outlet or academic journal, but are excluded. This creates biases of its own. Wikipedia is great in many ways, but I would say it’s not really designed to be neutral.

Wikipedia’s sourcing rules are a big part of the problem. Reliable sources on Wikipedia mostly means prestige, center-left Anglosphere media and a narrow slice of academic publishing. In practice that gives generalist news outlets more epistemic weight than field-specific experts, and it excludes large amounts of accurate but unfashionable or non-English material. The result is a replication of whatever biases are already baked into mainstream journalism.

The gatekeeping also isn’t democratic. A small, durable cluster of editors on WP:RSN effectively decides which sources are allowed, banned, or given special status. They aren’t vetted for expertise and don’t need to disclose conflicts of interest, yet their decisions propagate across thousands of articles. If a coordinated group influences RSN, they can shape whole domains simply by defining which sources count as "real."

WP:NPOV becomes a matter of which media ecosystems have the loudest megaphone, not which sources are actually most accurate. Control the allowed sources and you control the encyclopedia.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#77

Post by kuba50 »

kamranjon wrote: post #6

I've been reading a lot of Don Delillo lately and so I wanted to see how Grokipedia page on him fares. I found the "Critiques of elitism" section and noticed this sentence: "Reviews of Mao II (1991), for instance, highlighted the novel's focus on a performance artist protagonist as emblematic of this tendency, with detractors accusing DeLillo of prioritizing esoteric concerns over relatable human experiences, thereby…

The problem is not whether you are impressed or not.

The problem is in the assumption/story/belief that "Intelligence" is "magic" can be "perfected". It's not true. Philosophers have known it forever. And the AI hypestorm will remind everyone how over rated intelligence actually is.

Intelligence can produce Socratic thought. It can also get Socrates killed. It can produce Aristotle and chase Aristotle out of the village. It can produce Einstein and make him depressed. It can produce Galileo and Gandhi and pretend what they say should be deleted.

People are told all the time Brains/Intelligence are special. Its not true. Even if human brains disappear tomorrow sky is not going to fall. Life and the universe will carry on happily on their merry way.

What can be called special is what happens to Information flowing through thousands and thousands of brains over thousands and thousands of years. What Information survives that process can be interesting. But its no where close to the what we see with Photosynthesis or the Krebs Cycle that emerges out of similar process of Information flowing through microbes.

The info through these processes constantly gets misplaced/corrupted/co-opted/deleted etc. Look at the Bible. Lot of people aren't impressed with it either. Yet it has lasted the downfall of nations, empires and kings.

It's survival has nothing to do with the quality of Information within it - https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

The same applies to both wikipedia and grokpedia or whatever is produced next through "intelligence".

Once you realize your own brain is very imperfect you don't spend so much time worrying about chimp troupe drama generated through those brains. It's called flourishing through detachment - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#78

Post by jameslk »

Terr_ wrote: post #71
jameslk wrote: post #39

The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. It’s an experiment with LLMs. Who cares? It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense, whatever. The internet is like that. Maybe it’ll actually become something useful. Or it’ll inspire something useful. Regardless, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so these articles just give the project airtime. Even commenters here mention they haven’…

> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. Is others' negative-reaction to this sort of thing actually unusual... or is "weird" a rationalization for "seeing them do that makes me unhappy in this instance"? I think it's relatively normal (and positive) for people to be "hating on" something which is arguably unhelpful/lies/propaganda.

Yeah it’s pretty weird that there’s a need to write this article about it, when there’s plenty of other sites that are detestable if not more. And yet, this causes a Streisand effect. The site hasn’t been around for more than a couple of months and yet it keeps getting free airtime and backlinks from controversy of its existence. LLMs trained on the web pick up the utterances of the name all over the place and assign it some notoriety. And then, weirdly, people wonder why the site is showing up in their search/prompt results

If I were an evil billionaire I guess I’d create/buy media companies just to talk negatively about myself and my projects because it’s apparently a very effective way to get attention. Just play two sides against each other who have an emotional urge to keep saying my name

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#79

Post by femiagbabiaka »

boxerab wrote: post #64
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not possible to make a good version of Grokipedia while satisfying the requirements of its owner, namely to launder ultra-right viewpoints[1]. 1: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-grokipedia-...

can you a) define "ultra-right" viewpoints and b) give some references for these views on Grokipedia ?

I cited an article in my comment to back up my claims. The paper it references is publicly available and goes into more detail. Is that not enough?

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#80

Post by LexiMax »

binary132 wrote: post #63
stingraycharles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the fact that it exists nor is written by AIs, it’s the intent that it should promote Musk’s personal (political) biases instead of seeking out the truth.

unlike the eminently objective and unbiased Wikipedia

Conservapedia already exists if you care about the politics involved.

Grokipedia is just a lazy low-effort vanity project of an unlikable billionaire. And that's a sentiment I've seen from conservatives and liberals.

EDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that tech oligarchs once pretended to be progressive because it was the "in" thing to do. They are now pretending to be conservative because it's the "in" thing to do.

But the truth is that they have no real morals and only believe in their own wealth and power. Even if you think their politics align with yours, it is only a temporary convenience, they will discard you as sure as they discarded liberals.

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