Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grok 4

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 294 posts

Re: Grok 4

#211

Post by csomar »

tptacek wrote: post #138
rozap wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would write incorrect code and then you'd need to go debug it, and then you would have to come to the same conclusion that you would have come to had you written it in the first place, only the process would have been deeply frustrating and would feel more like stumbling around in the dark rather than thinking your way through a problem and truly understanding the domain. In the instance of getting claude to fix c…

I'm like 60% there with you: * When it gets the design wrong, trying to talk through straightening the design out is frustrating and often not productive. * I've learned to re-prompt rather than trying to salvage a prompt response that's complicatedly not what I want. * Exception: when it misses functional requirements, you can usually get a session to add the things it's missing.

> * When it gets the design wrong, trying to talk through straightening the design out is frustrating and often not productive.

What I have learned is that when it gets the design wrong, your approach is very likely wrong (especially if you are doing something not out of ordinary). The solution is to re-frame your approach and start again to find that path of least resistance where the LLM can flow unhindered.

Re: Grok 4

#212

Post by dotancohen »

aliljet wrote: post #18

[edit to focus on pricing, leaving praise of Simon's post out despite being deserved] Simon claims, 'Grok 4 is competitively priced. It's $3/million for input tokens and $15/million for output tokens - the same price as Claude Sonnet 4.' This ignores the real price which skyrockets with thinking tokens. This is a classic weird tesla-style pricing tactic at work. The price is not what it seems. The tokens it's burning…

  > This is a classic weird tesla-style pricing tactic at work. The price is not what it seems.
How is that "tesla-style pricing"? When I bought my Tesla the price was exactly what they told me it would be. Contrast that with every other car I've bought new, especially the Ford Focus for which the salesman tried to haggle me for more options and told me he thinks we should raise the price a bit "to make sure it gets approved" as I'm signing the paperwork.

I've never had a clearer new car purchase than with my Tesla.

Re: Grok 4

#213

Post by nerevarthelame »

itake wrote: post #180
nerevarthelame wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing not to answer - regardless of whether or not that was a rule mandated by the CEO (an unsourced and unlikely claim given the corporate structure of most large organizations) - is far different than insisting on an answer from whatever the CEO last decided to tweet. One is returning "null." The other is not. One says, "Figure that one out yourself." The other says, "Here is the truth."

neat, so how does this mesh with OpenAI (and deepseek) offering country-specific models? Why is it ok for OpenAI to do this, but everyone is up in arms when their competitor does?

I don't know what regionalization OpenAI or Deepseek do. But it makes sense that they would change some things because of different languages, cultures, and regulations. Most global businesses tailor products for different regions.

People are up in arms that Grok is using their CEO's shitposting as a primary knowledge base because that is a low quality source of information.

Re: Grok 4

#214

Post by twright0 »

dotancohen wrote: post #212
aliljet wrote: post #18

[edit to focus on pricing, leaving praise of Simon's post out despite being deserved] Simon claims, 'Grok 4 is competitively priced. It's $3/million for input tokens and $15/million for output tokens - the same price as Claude Sonnet 4.' This ignores the real price which skyrockets with thinking tokens. This is a classic weird tesla-style pricing tactic at work. The price is not what it seems. The tokens it's burning…

> This is a classic weird tesla-style pricing tactic at work. The price is not what it seems. How is that "tesla-style pricing"? When I bought my Tesla the price was exactly what they told me it would be. Contrast that with every other car I've bought new, especially the Ford Focus for which the salesman tried to haggle me for more options and told me he thinks we should raise the price a bit "to make sure it gets ap…

For the better part of a decade people have been buying Teslas under the promise that the cars would drive themselves better than their owner could, or would offset their cost by participating in a self-driving taxi service while their owners were not using them, none of which has come remotely true.

Re: Grok 4

#215

Post by synecdoche »

Why is it that there are posts on X listing Grok as number 1 in many comparison tests (retweeted by Musk) but elsewhere it’s mostly disparaged, almost exclusively on political or moral grounds?

Re: Grok 4

#216

Post by ascorbic »

seattle_spring wrote: post #175
goalieca wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini had an aborted launch recently. The controversy there was inserting too much leftist ideology to the point of spewing complete bs.

Can you share some reputable coverage of this event? I can't find much mention of it anywhere. What were some specific responses that had "inserted leftist ideology"?

This is presumably a reference to this, though it was in Feb 2024 which is a lifetime ago in LLM terms.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68364690

Re: Grok 4

#217

Post by nashashmi »

jacktheturtle wrote: post #148
kunzhi wrote: post #133

Grok might be able to find the cure for cancer but as long as it's associated with Musk, not touching that thing with a 10-foot pole. (Simon's analysis, of course, is lovely)

why?

musk is unstable. and so are the products he has under him. these are not good things to rely on. i got off twitter and now the site's drama doesn't affect me. at the same time, i miss the great content from threads. :(

Re: Grok 4

#218

Post by frotaur »

kouteiheika wrote: post #191

> Even if that system prompt change was responsible for unlocking this behavior, the fact that it was able to speaks to a much looser approach to model safety by xAI compared to other providers. While this probably shouldn't be the default mode for the general public, I'm glad that at least one frontier model is not being lobotomized by "safety" guardrails. There are valid use cases where you want an uncensored, stee…

Don't worry, it's being lobotimized by the 'unwoke' guardrails instead

Re: Grok 4

#219

Post by tzs »

radium3d wrote: post #134
aliljet wrote: post #18

[edit to focus on pricing, leaving praise of Simon's post out despite being deserved] Simon claims, 'Grok 4 is competitively priced. It's $3/million for input tokens and $15/million for output tokens - the same price as Claude Sonnet 4.' This ignores the real price which skyrockets with thinking tokens. This is a classic weird tesla-style pricing tactic at work. The price is not what it seems. The tokens it's burning…

Tesla focused its pricing on drivers of gasoline vehicles, and their gas cost savings estimates are actually quite low compared to the real savings you will achieve. It was annoying when you already drive an EV and are buying a Tesla though to have to uncheck the savings option to see the pre savings prices. They changed it now so by default it only includes the $7500 and no longer automatically checks the gas saving…

> Based on my experience I highly recommend everyone buy any EV if you drive an ICE vehicle. Even charging at DC fast chargers still saves money, but if you can charge at home, you are really missing out on savings big time and it's time to look seriously into it

In the US this depends on where you live. There are several places where home electricity is expensive enough and gas is cheap enough that a hybrid is cheaper.

Re: Grok 4

#220

Post by dyauspitr »

kouteiheika wrote: post #191

> Even if that system prompt change was responsible for unlocking this behavior, the fact that it was able to speaks to a much looser approach to model safety by xAI compared to other providers. While this probably shouldn't be the default mode for the general public, I'm glad that at least one frontier model is not being lobotomized by "safety" guardrails. There are valid use cases where you want an uncensored, stee…

It’s not uncensored, it censors anything “woke”
Post reply on HN