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Grok 4

simonwillison.net

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Re: Grok 4

#281
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It obviously can be resolved, otherwise we wouldn't be able to self-correct our own selves. When is unknown, but not the if.

We can sometimes correct ourselves. With training, in specific circumstances. The same insight (given enough time, a coding agent will make a mistake) is true for even the best human programmers, and I don’t see any mechanism that would make an LLM different.

The reason you will basically never just recommend e.g. somebody use a completely nonexistent function is because you're not just guessing what the answer to something should be. Rather you have a knowledge base which you believe to be correct and are constantly evolving and drawing from it.

LLMs do not function like this at all. Rather all they have is a series of weights to help predict the next token given the prior tokens. Cascading errors is a lot like a math problem. If you make a mistake somewhere along when solving a lengthy problem then your further calculations will also continue to be more and more wrong. The same is true of an LLM when executing its prediction algorithm.

This is why an LLM does give you a wrong answer it's usually just an exercise in frustration trying to get it to correct itself, and you'd be better of just creating a completely new context.

Re: Grok 4

#282
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty interesting that this model will have two forms of bias though. One model derived from the company perspective and its training data, and two from Elon himself. Months ago this model would have promoted Trump, but now it'll call Trump disastrous for the economy. I don't know what to think of general company biases, and we've all been expecting biases to start favoring share holders eventually.. but biase…

> Months ago this model would have promoted Trump, but now it'll call Trump disastrous for the economy. There’s a well-known quote often attributed to economist John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

Yea but this example wasn't of the facts changing. It was of opinions changing. Musk had one opinion months ago, and a different one now. The bot explicitly searched twitter for the current opinions of someone with a history of less than stable actions (i'm trying to be generous for sake of neutrality).

This bot isn't at the whims of the corporate oversight or advertisements, or even direction of a CEO - the bot is at the whims of every post from a chronically online and addicted Twitter personality. Even if you ignore Elons other flaws, making a bot the sum total of everything he's said on Twitter is pretty impressive. .. and not in a good way.

Re: Grok 4

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story on the front page says it checks Elon's tweets when you ask it something factual.

It doesn't check his tweets specifically for facts. There's a clear anti-Elon bias on this website. Often links go to the same single reporter that has wrote 10 previous hit pieces on Elon in the past.

Why wouldn’t there be bias? This is the guy that did a Nazi salute, an ideology that specifically calls for races of people to be exterminated. I can’t imagine another situation where you need to as aggressively biased.

It’s no surprise he has released the most censored LLM so far.

It’s like saying I shouldn’t be biased against my kid’s schoolteacher who is a habitual sexual offender.

Re: Grok 4

#284
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a fact that Elon was personally unhappy with some of Grok's answers and tried to "fix" it, i.e. align it with his personal political views. Cool! You can also replace "Elon" with "Sundar" as Google’s CEO openly pushed for more PoC and women in image search. Did you grab your pitch forks then? Or are you just upset when CEO's align AI away from your personal biases? or you a reflexive Musk opposer?

These things are not remotely comparable. > or you a reflexive Musk opposer? Are you a reflexive Musk apologist?

No, I don't like Musk. I've never owned stock in any of his companies or purchased their products. I deleted my twitter account when he took over and block twitter on all my devices.

Can you explain why they are not comparable? Both are CEOs tuned model's based on their personal beliefs. The only difference I think is you agree with one CEO's personal beliefs, but not the others.

Re: Grok 4

#285
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things are not remotely comparable. > or you a reflexive Musk opposer? Are you a reflexive Musk apologist?

No, I don't like Musk. I've never owned stock in any of his companies or purchased their products. I deleted my twitter account when he took over and block twitter on all my devices. Can you explain why they are not comparable? Both are CEOs tuned model's based on their personal beliefs. The only difference I think is you agree with one CEO's personal beliefs, but not the others.

> Both are CEOs tuned model's based on their personal beliefs.

That's not true. Google tried to counter an actual bias in its image generation (albeit with catostrophic results). Do you really think they did this only to align with Sundar's personal political beliefs? Give me a break. And if you don't see the absurdity of consulting the CEO's recent twitter feed as a source of reasoning (on topics where that person is certainly not an expert), I don't know what to say...

Re: Grok 4

#286
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't like Musk. I've never owned stock in any of his companies or purchased their products. I deleted my twitter account when he took over and block twitter on all my devices. Can you explain why they are not comparable? Both are CEOs tuned model's based on their personal beliefs. The only difference I think is you agree with one CEO's personal beliefs, but not the others.

> Both are CEOs tuned model's based on their personal beliefs. That's not true. Google tried to counter an actual bias in its image generation (albeit with catostrophic results). Do you really think they did this only to align with Sundar's personal political beliefs? Give me a break. And if you don't see the absurdity of consulting the CEO's recent twitter feed as a source of reasoning (on topics where that person i…

I was thinking more of Google's effort to diversify image search results (showing women and POC as CEOs to counter the reality that most CEOs are older white men). Sundar aligned Google with California/Democratic agenda at the time.

Now Musk is copying Sundar: aligning the grok family of models with the current political climate that he's even even helped shape.

It doesn’t matter if the model is biased via Elon’s tweets or DEI hand-tuning: either way, it's top-down political ideology embedded in product. If you can’t see the double standard, I don't know what to say...

Re: Grok 4

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd, when i open it the page loads for second , then disappears and claims it was unable to load the page. But by the point i've already seen what's in it.

I think that's because GitHub is trying to load the dozens of awful comments on the commit by people with usernames like waifuconnoisseur lamenting the loss of the politically incorrect, Hitler-loving grok. For what it's worth, they unfortunately load for me in Safari but it takes ~10 seconds.

Yeah, I also see tons of comments in there loading up, and then at some point the page "crashes" and you get the "unable to load" page

Re: Grok 4

#288
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both are CEOs tuned model's based on their personal beliefs. That's not true. Google tried to counter an actual bias in its image generation (albeit with catostrophic results). Do you really think they did this only to align with Sundar's personal political beliefs? Give me a break. And if you don't see the absurdity of consulting the CEO's recent twitter feed as a source of reasoning (on topics where that person i…

I was thinking more of Google's effort to diversify image search results (showing women and POC as CEOs to counter the reality that most CEOs are older white men). Sundar aligned Google with California/Democratic agenda at the time. Now Musk is copying Sundar: aligning the grok family of models with the current political climate that he's even even helped shape. It doesn’t matter if the model is biased via Elon’s twe…

> Now Musk is copying Sundar: aligning the grok family of models with the current political climate that he's even even helped shape.

No, he is aligning it with his very personal political believes, see the "white genocide" thing. That's not what happened at Google. Musk literally wants to “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge". I don't necessarily want to defend Google (although I think the topic is more nuanced), but it is not remotely comparable to what Musk is trying to do with xAI.

Re: Grok 4

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't check his tweets specifically for facts. There's a clear anti-Elon bias on this website. Often links go to the same single reporter that has wrote 10 previous hit pieces on Elon in the past.

Why wouldn’t there be bias? This is the guy that did a Nazi salute, an ideology that specifically calls for races of people to be exterminated. I can’t imagine another situation where you need to as aggressively biased. It’s no surprise he has released the most censored LLM so far. It’s like saying I shouldn’t be biased against my kid’s schoolteacher who is a habitual sexual offender.

He didn't do a nazi salute though. He made a motion that looked like one. HE literally went to a memorial for israelites a year early and wore a necklace in their memory for over a year.

Re: Grok 4

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their gas cost savings estimates are actually quite low compared to the real savings you will achieve I ran the numbers for myself and they literally weren't. They overestimated how many miles/yr I drove and underestimated how much I pay for electricity. There's plenty of other reasons to prefer EVs, but if you live somewhere with expensive electricity then fuel cost isn't one of them. In the sedan world you're like…

> but even small SUV are getting 30-40 mpg nowadays. The Pacific Northwest begs to differ. With all the hills in Seattle my subcompact 1.6L Turbo barely got 20MPG driving around like a grandma. Our electricity is cheap, but I drive less than 5000 miles a year so I'm not making the money back on my EV basically ever.

You should have gotten a used Nissan Leaf. Perfect in town car.
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