Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia • Hacker News Board

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#121

Post by UncleMeat » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #60

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.

How so? Musk isn’t writing the articles, Grok is. And as far as I’ve seen, Grok doesn’t spit out information all that different from the other LLMs.

Do other LLMs say that Musk is a better athlete than Lebron James and is more deserving of a lifetime achievement award at the Adult Video Network awards than Riley Reid?

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#122

Post by tim333 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 1:26 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #35

atonse wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is there any reason to not treat this as Wikipedia? As in, just suggest a correction?

See all the heavily biased content on the Joe Biden and Donald Trump articles? Why not start there? Try to see if you can contribute a more neutral voice. My guess is that the tone of these articles we see now is only the beginning. This thing is only a month old. Then this will become the source of truth in the LLMs. I cannot believe they've gone so against the spirit of contributors and that there's no legal recour…

I'm a contributor and I'm fine with it. I believe in creative commons and anyone can do what they want. I think people will ignore Musk's thing.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#123

Post by tim333 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

qcnguy wrote: post #108

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.

The explicit stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth. A lot of the internet doesn't do this. Wikipedia doesn't! As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if something is said by "authoritative sources" then it goes in, and something isn't then it doesn't, and what is actually true doesn't matter at all. They explicitly ban original research, even. But what gets blessed as authoritative, some backroom deals that always a…

Couple of points -

What is absolute truth? You can get into long philosophical debates. As a practical matter Wikipedia goes with mainstream sources.

The "stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth" sounds good in theory but I fear it may be to reflect Musk's views in practice.

If the options are either the NYT or the visions of Musk, I'll take the NYT personally.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#124

Post by smallmancontrov » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 1:58 PM UTC

mbirth wrote: post #111

croon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its' entire (stated) raison d'etre is that wikipedia is biased and wrong, so let's swap the question and instead ask for evidence of wikipedia sticking to wrong edits. If not, then grokipedia must exist for some other reason. Edit: Of course edit spamming/concerted efforts can affect wikipedia, but I'd rather that possibility than the entire thing be edit controlled by a person with an endless string of scrupulous be…

Do you really believe, Elon is watching over all Grokipedia articles and edits them as he pleases? And, to engage in your whataboutism, it’s not that Wikipedia is inherently publishing wrong facts. It’s about their editors omitting inconvenient facts about their favourite political people. Here’s a paper about how the (German) articles of ruling party members are usually shorter than those of the opposing parties. Cr…

It's 2025, not 2015. Complaints about lies of omission must be contrasted with how remarkably comfortable Elon and Trump and the right wing in general have become with lies of commission.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#125

Post by tim333 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:04 PM UTC

maxdo wrote: post #69

I know nothing about elon's wikipedia, but... Wikipedia has increasingly become a commercial project that exploits nationalistic sentiments. Take the Israel-Palestine or Ukraine-Russia conflicts as examples—you'll find completely contradictory articles on the same topics across different language editions, each reflecting opposing viewpoints. Many of these editors are sponsored by governments, creating an entire ecos…

I'm not sure Wikipedia itself has become a commercial project but commercial enterprises will certainly try to influence their portrayal as will different interest groups in general. I guess it's just an inherent problem with that kind of thing.

Any examples of sponsored editors? Google and the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_editing_inci... don't seem to have them

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#126

Post by Steltek » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

qcnguy wrote: post #107

danabramov wrote: post #30

For me, the scary moment was seeing Grokipedia show up as one of the “sources” in a random Claude query a few days ago. Even if people don’t explicitly choose to use it, poisoning the well is working.

[flagged]

It's very weird to assume good intentions or trustworthy info from Grokipedia but then hold up Wikipedia as "heavily poisoned". Your questions are based on a lot of assumptions that aren't widely shared.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#127

Post by qcnguy » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

card_zero wrote: post #110

qcnguy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explicit stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth. A lot of the internet doesn't do this. Wikipedia doesn't! As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if something is said by "authoritative sources" then it goes in, and something isn't then it doesn't, and what is actually true doesn't matter at all. They explicitly ban original research, even. But what gets blessed as authoritative, some backroom deals that always a…

Not "authoritative", reliable. From WP:Reliable_sources "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." You can see summaries of past debates about specific sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... If Grok is going to vet its sources, it will have to do a similar crowd-sourcing of opinion about them. The advantage…

Those debates just show why Grokipedia is needed. Truth seeking is the opposite, it's when you demand crowdsourced consensus that debates become endless and stupid.

Here's a cut and dried case: the BBC admitted recently to broadcasting faked video of a Trump speech. It wasn't a mistake and the lying was institutional in nature, i.e. an internal whistleblower tried to get it fixed and BBC management up to the top viewed it as OK to broadcast video they knew was fake. Even when it was revealed publicly, they still defended it with logic like "OK, maybe Trump didn't say that but it's the sort of thing he might have said".

So the BBC can't be considered a reliable source, yet Wikipedia cites it all over the place. This problem was debated here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...

The discussion shows just how stupid Wikipedia has become. Highlights include:

1. Calling The Telegraph a tabloid (it's not)

2. Not reading the report ("What exactly was editted incorrectly?", "it's just an allegation")

3. Circular logic: "This just seems like mudslinging unless this is considered significant by less partisan publications" but their definition of "less partisan" means sources like the BBC, that just lied for partisan reasons.

4. Shooting the messenger for not being left wing enough.

5. Not fixing the problem: "Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".

Wikipedia is as broken as can be. It institutionally doesn't care that its "reliable sources" forge video evidence to manipulate politics. As long as left wing people turn up to defend it, there is no consensus, and nothing will change even if those people clearly don't even bother reading what happened. The death of Wikipedia will be slow, but it will be thoroughly deserved.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#128

Post by qcnguy » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #114

qcnguy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>> "For many people it's obvious" [who?][citation needed] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template%3AWho Having standards for this stuff matters even if you don't always like the result.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word... >> "Weasel words are words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous…

Citation: go look at how many people are submitting edits to the articles. That is "many" people.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#129

Post by olelele » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

qcnguy wrote: post #106

echelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See all the heavily biased content on the Joe Biden and Donald Trump articles? Why not start there? Try to see if you can contribute a more neutral voice. My guess is that the tone of these articles we see now is only the beginning. This thing is only a month old. Then this will become the source of truth in the LLMs. I cannot believe they've gone so against the spirit of contributors and that there's no legal recour…

Against the spirit of the contributors? You know Wikipedia's founders have heavily criticized Wikipedia's blatant political biases, right? Having LLMs edit encyclopedias, moderate forums and do everything else we rely on user moderation for today is the way of the future. They can be much fairer, more predictable, controllable and put you less at the mercy of the army of whackjobs that end up controlling sites like W…

"Can be" does a lot of heavy lifting here. LLMs have not proven their reliability anywhere afaik.

Re: Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia

#130

Post by zzzeek » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

Levitz wrote: post #54

zzzeek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would a "good" version be ? Start putting real facts into a site and before you know it you're "woke" again with such untruths as Slavery was Bad, Biden won the 2020 Election and of course Full Self Driving is Impossible without Lidar

>Start putting real facts into a site and before you know it you're "woke" again This is precisely the problem that is being arrogantly failing to be addressed by grokipedia. This idea that knowledge naturally leans ideologically left and that as such it's not only natural, but even beneficial that there is widespread left wing bias.

"Joe Biden won the 2020 election" is not a "left wing" notion (or if you're looking for a more hefty one, "vaccines do not cause autism"). it is objective fact. the "left wing" has nothing to do with this, it's about the "right wing" has decided to reject objective fact as part of their ideological platform.