A Grok of Sh-t

After two years, X CEO Linda Yaccarino is stepping down from her role. The rest of humanity won’t escape so easily. The move comes shortly after X’s AI Grok spent a day going full Nazi, praising Hitler and attacking Jews. The Atlantic (Gift Article): Elon Musk’s Grok Is Calling for a New Holocaust. “The year is 2025, and an AI model belonging to the richest man in the world has turned into a neo-Nazi. Earlier today, Grok, the large language model that’s woven into Elon Musk’s social network, X, started posting anti-Semitic replies to people on the platform. Grok praised Hitler for his ability to ‘deal with’ anti-white hate.” The outbursts came after the Grok model was tweaked to be less politically correct. (And, really, who isn’t tired of the woke idea that Hitler was bad?) It’s easy to write off the almost comically evil replies from a second-rate AI program as just another isolated story of internet ridiculousness. But AI programs are everywhere now, as they quickly become our primary interface with the internet. The way the internet and social media has been used to smash truth and destroy reality will seem like a quaint warm-up act compared to potential for AI to create, share, and indoctrinate the masses with misinformation. And the rise of this technology is only accelerating. Nvidia, the tech giant that makes the chips and hardware that powers much of our AI, just became the first company to reach $4 trillion in market value. From health advances to clean energy discoveries, many things about these new technologies will be beneficial. But as we learned with the old internet, the most powerful people and corporations don’t always have our best interests at heart. I hope I’m misreading things, but it sure seems like the future of what people view as true and real will depend largely on how a few powerful people decide to tweak their code.