I got the impression Grokipedia (what a lousy name, BTW; there's not a teenage rock band that would call itself that) has been trained on Wikipedia. I compared the entries for "Gallium Arsenide", and Grok's first sections is a copy of Wikipedia, with a an editor-like comment on top:
Gallium arsenide
Except where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa). verify (what is Y N ?)
Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, infrared light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, solar cells and optical windows.[6] GaAs is often used as a substrate material for the epitaxial growth of other III-V semiconductors, including indium gallium arsenide, aluminum gallium arsenide and others.
Is hasn't so much been 'trained' on Wikipedia but seems to have 'copied' a large fraction of the 'less contentious' (i.e. less politically biased) content of the site and marked it as such in the footer: The content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
Here's an example of such an article, this one on Toroidal Propellers:
This is not surprising and quite legal given the licence conditions. It is also fitting given the stated intent of 'Grokipedia' as being a less biased knowledge source - if Wikipedia did not suffer from being overly politically biased there would not have been a need for alternatives.
The above example is not a high-quality article - it reads more like a sales brochure - but it does not show political bias. It will be interesting to see whether Grokipedia follows edits to Wikipedia content and if it 'rejects' or 'edits out' politically biased edits.
I'm sure you're aware of the challenges of defining 'political bias' - usually people mean 'political views that conflict with mine', and what 'people' mean, LLMs learn.
Also, do you think Musk suddenly wants to be non-biased? Musk is openly, explicitly, and aggressively biased in favor of his views and against anything that conflicts with them. Wikipedia has a NPOV rule; Musk has a My Point of View rule.
This reminds me of a joke website I pondered making a few years ago 'provemeright.com'. If you are in a bar and you make an outrageous claim and don't want to back down, provemeright.com has your back! Give us 10 min and we will edit wikipedia and create a website with your 'fact' on it!... It was a funny joke when it wasn't real.
Wikipedia, and it's volunteer of editors are extremely quick at checking edits. In university, we once create a page for my room mate and listed his admirable, but odd quirks. It was taken down in a matter of minutes.
Arguably the purpose of this site isn't to serve the public or to compile knowledge (it's not user editable at all from what I can see).
The point is to get this thing crawled and given weight by LLMs in order to poison them and bias them in the direction Musk wants: debunked race science, anti-transgender, etc etc.
Presumably, a lot of the anti-transgender claims are new enough whole-cloth inventions to not have yet been debunked, while that's less true of the race science stuff.
Musk was never the sharpest tool in the box, and he used to regularly make a fool of himself to his employees by trying to pass himself off as an engineer like Silicon Valley's most annoying suit, but ever since he started falling for the dumbest conspiracy theories, he's been really dedicated (and to his credit, he knows how to be dedicated, though not for long) to making stupidity an intellectual ideal.
It's amazing to see such deep insecurities (in Musk's case, that he's not as smart as the people around him) played out so publicly and by such successful people. Instead of going to therapy, they spend fortunes trying to construct a world that would justify their self-perception. Maybe if an encyclopedia said he was right, Musk could finally feel smart.
It's not just Musk, of course; many people in his political realm do the same. You misunderstand what they're doing, which is why they're so successful and 'get away with it' endlessly. It looks like something you expect, but you're losing the game because you aren't even aware you're on the field playing. You'll notice their followers laugh about 'owning' you - what do they mean?
To the (neo-reactionaries), words are weapons and not conveyers of information. Extreme statements are, in many cases, better weapons than accurate ones, certainly better than moderate ones - they sieze the initiative, put the speaker on offense, put their opponent on their heels because the words are so unexpected and aggressive.
To people who think the words convey information, the words and behavior make no sense. You think you're having a political debate, but they are fighting a war to destroy you. It's like you listening to their signal, trying to decode what makes no sense, when they are really trying to electrocute you.
In a sense I don't fault people for not grokking that (ha ha) but I do fault them for seeing something is wrong, for all these years, and not making the intellectual effort to figure it out. It seems like almost nobody, national and world leaders and leading intellectuals included, has figured it out.
Of course, but at least one of the mechanisms by which those weapons work is to increase the number of people in society with a completely broken epistemology; i.e. they want to make more people stupid, because stupid people could go along with anything.
The gap widens. If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point? You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. I think I would just stop relying. Most people would. It's not a new problem, but that wall keeps growing.
I would do the same exact thing I would do if they had linked me to Wikipedia. I would find the place in the article that states their point, look for where it is referenced in the sources, verify the reputability of that source, and then read for the claim in the source to see what it has to say about it. Especially if the source actually claims the opposite of what the article has written about it. Further, for Wikipedia, I would read through the Talk page for the article to see any mentions of bias or potential lies by omission.
Whether it being from Grokipedia or Wikipedia does not change the approach.
> You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument.
Your powerlessness, their invincibility, is part of their propaganda. It's like the reason people act angrily - they are trying to discourage you from approaching them.
Argument doesn't work. You'll be surprised what sincere, genuine, empathetic reasoning does. I find it works pretty well. Take them seriously, have genuine empathy, don't get inflamed - that's the intent of their leaders' inflammatory language: they want you inflamed, to drive a wedge between you and your friend.
It depends on the forum, but I think some level of "flamewar" type stuff should be tolerated for scenarios like this. I'd happily be okay with someone replying to me and saying "you're really fucking offbase and delusional on this because X, Y, and Z" as it provides a quick reality check (or a point to respond to)
> If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point?
First, when arguing on the Internet, I'm often reminded of the "Someone wrong on the Internet" comic:
Second, I think it worth remembering that you'll have better (online) mental health if you don't try to have the last word. At some point it's best to drop it. This has been true for a long time: Usenet newsreaders used to have killfiles so you could filter out certain people.
Also worth keeping in mind the 'human DoS' aspect of things:
> Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.[5][6][7][8] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate",[9] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki,[1] which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".[2]
True, but more and wider references seems to imply better when I’m not sure that’s true. Wikipedia is edited and it’s sources are curated. I think that’s a good thing.
I'll disregard that person's legitimacy just the same way as someone who would use Infowars, The Free Press, Breitbart, The Sun, Daily Mail, or Zero Hedge as a source.
Yeah, that's kinda why I see the gap/wall as a problem that needs to be addressed rather than just accepting it as an unfortunate part of the world. Turns out containment doesn't work; these are real people with real power. Ignore them long enough and someone will leverage them to make an attempt at destroying society.
I cannot take statements like this seriously because they are nearly universally a nebulous bad faith way for someone to claim "my personal political opinions are objective reality" which is an outright perversion of the scientific method and the pursuit of knowledge at large.
I would say the same to someone who would boldly claim "reality has a conservative bias"
By the current standards of US discourse, Dick Cheney and both Presidents Bush, and Reagan as per recent advert drama, are "left wing".
By British standards, the US Democrats are dangerously radical libertarians owing to the fact the Democrats support even the slightest right to personal access to firearms. There's only a rounding error of support in the British policians for "republican" policies, i.e. ceasing to be a monarchy.
Musk is, in the UK, supporting a man who identifies as "Tommy Robinson" (real name "Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon"), and has called for Farage, the leader of the UK's populist far right party Reform, to stop leading that party after Farage distanced himself from Yaxley-Lennon.
winners write history, and Elon is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to put himself at the forefront, even if it means sacrificing humanity future.
It's a classic case of delusions of grandeur, his story will be told, but not in the way he hopes. We just need to tank few more shit years I guess.
I'm a little amazed people still have the perspective of "a few more years" when it is very clear that the Republicans have no intent of offering a free and fair election. The rubicon has been crossed ten times over, they got into power after attempting a coup last time, all the safeguards and people who would refuse are long gone, if they don't succeed this time it'll be through sheer incompetence rather than anything else.
Leaving culture war articles aside, I think having on other subjects, a diversity of perspectives is legitimate. Consider a personal interest of mine, the dark ages in Europe after the fall of the western Roman empire.
The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)) is a one-sided presentation that begins with denying the historical reality of a period called "the dark ages", continues with a history of the term itself, and concludes with a brief section on non-academic use of the term and reiterates the claim that the periodization is a "myth of popular culture". The article barely mentions the events of the period.
If you read the Grokipedia article on the same subject (https://grokipedia.com/page/Dark_Ages_(historiography)), you'll find not only meta-discussion of the origins of the term, but also in-depth exploration of the events of the period, the causes of the decline in living standards, and arguments from prominent scholars on both sides of the debate about the utility of labeling this period a "dark age".
The Wikipedia article doesn't mention Ward-Perkins, a prominent scholar in the camp arguing that the dark ages represented real material decline. The Grokipedia article cites him extensively.
The difference is interesting because Grokipedia's presentation is much closer to the truth. The dark ages really were in fact dark. In some parts of Europe, literacy itself was almost lost. Trade did collapse. Living standards did fall. We have tons of archaeological and literary evidence attesting to this decline. Tabooing the term "dark ages" does nothing to deepen our understanding.
Yet the Wikipedia article is one-sided because, frankly, its editors see themselves as enforcers of academic orthodoxy.
There are thousands of disputed subjects like this outside the culture war everyone gets worked up about. It really is the case that Wikipedia presents one side of live academic conflicts and gatekeeps sources to minimize heterodox perspectives -- again, all having nothing to do with mechahitler or the culture war or whatever.
I'm glad there's more epistemic competition in the world now.
2018 has a lovely progression of articles 'are we living in ___&'s world now', that went from George Orwell to Aldous Huxley to finally Philip K Dick (PKD).
And Henry Farrell nailed it with the PKD article. Dick was obsessed with fake humans, with reality being taken over by all manner of camouflaged invader or alternate reality weirdo coming in and co-opting our reality away from us. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k...
It's a glorious article. And it's totally the sicko shit happening right here. Grokipedia will almost certainly never hold itself to any real standards, will source (if they source at all) the most absurd ridiculous reality window shopped bottom of the barrel garbage, from horrendous sources. Stealing Wikipedia then probably using AI to rewrite a quarter of it to some bias seems absurdly likely.
"Reality shopping on the internet" has become such a major major effort. And Grokipedia is striving to become exactly such an appealing reality, a bespoke weird racist meanspirited place that confirms the invading forces reality against can do human spirit and hope and inclusion and possibility.
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans does so much to capture what is alas so much defining aspects of our time: the slide away from consensual believable reality and into the rabbit hole weirdness and conspiracy theory universes. That the Internet has unchained, taken what would be normal humans & turned them into fakes. This struggle is going to keep going. I wish these fakers all the failure and dejectedment their window shopped view of the world that their fake human perspective here deserves; I hope this infodump is burned down in the future by people happy to see this absurd farce against reality put to an end.
Seems to confirm Elon Musk is evil, no? Especially when considered along with his political "antics" and behaviors? Gaslighting at this scale is unconscionable.
Mass murderer of 14 million people overseas and however many here due to illegal policy changes at USAID, HHS, etc already cemented his evil status (by the exact same standards historians judge Mao Zedong for the Great Leap Forward).
If anyone knew Elon Musk existed by the time of the Thai cave rescue and didn't determine from that who he really is, they may not be perceptive.
Gaslighter, grifter, liar, bullshitter, bully, boor, take your pick.
I don't know that "evil" is a really useful word to fling around, full stop, because it's actually quite subjective.
The word I prefer to use for Musk, Trump, Peter Thiel, Andrew Tate etc., is "broken". What might have been good in them has been destroyed by their upbringing (and their fathers and/or schools).
Musk, like Trump, Thiel and Tate, is a broken person; he would be pitiable if he were not so dangerous. He cannot now be fixed; like Trump he is a malignant narcissist and can only get worse.
People who admire them are either misguided or broken themselves.
Spot on. These people are all severely emotionally stunted and it is both pitiable and dangerous to me. They will never experience the full breadth of human emotion. And they have inflicted incalculable damage on the rest of us.
> If anyone knew Elon Musk existed by the time of the Thai cave rescue and didn't determine from that who he really is, they may not be perceptive.
Took me a while after that to accept it wasn't just an aberration.
My perspective now is that it continues a pattern of behaviour also seen with his response to Top Gear; it's just that when he reacted to Top Gear, I had an even lower regard for Top Gear…
> I don't know that "evil" is a really useful word to fling around, full stop, because it's actually quite subjective.
They are trying to replicate what happened in Hungary with Orban and to a lesser extent 1991 Russia. The Heritage Foundation is central to architecting and carrying out this vision.
They being the oligarchs, the goal being to privatize public services, consolidate control and power, own the information space, or make it such a mess no one knows the truth anymore, idea popularity trumps facts
Much of Eastern Europe has seen rapid improvements since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Moldova elected a pro-EU instead of sliding into alt-right territory. So to declare it (or anything) never fails is never going to be true. Looking to Russia as an example, what hasn't been failing? They went from being #2 to being a a pariah state
While I broadly agree with you, Russia is not a useful example for this point: the failures as a state to be a good place for normal people to live in are not the important failures, instead look specifically at the oligarchs within it and the power they wield, the money they've made.
Some interesting comparisons I found between Wikipedia and grok. These are the intro paragraphs.
Grokipedia:
The Biden–Ukraine controversy pertains to allegations that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden conditioned $1 billion in loan guarantees on the Ukrainian government's dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016, purportedly to obstruct an ongoing investigation into Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy firm where Biden's son, Robert Hunter Biden, served as a board member receiving substantial compensation since May 2014.[1][2] Shokin, whose office had pursued corruption charges against Burisma's founder Mykola Zlochevsky—including probes into illicit asset acquisition and bribery—publicly stated that his removal derailed these efforts, coinciding with Hunter Biden's role amid the company's efforts to mitigate regulatory pressures.[2][3]
Wikipedia:
The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.[1] As part of efforts by Donald Trump[2] and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.[3]
Grokipedia:
Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that emerged in August 2014, primarily focused on exposing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in video game journalism, initiated by a blog post detailing the romantic involvement of indie developer Zoë Quinn with journalists who covered her work without disclosure.[1] The controversy began when Eron Gjoni, Quinn's ex-boyfriend, published "The Zoe Post," accusing her of infidelity with multiple individuals, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, whose article on Quinn's game Depression Quest omitted any mention of their prior personal contact.[2] This revelation highlighted broader patterns of undisclosed relationships and coordinated industry practices, such as private mailing lists among journalists, fueling demands for ethical reforms like mandatory disclosure policies.
Wikipedia:
Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.[2][3][4] It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.[a] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.[b]
Is the DPRK a democracy? They claim they are, so should a wiki blindly report that they are?
Likewise, it's absurd to claim Gamergate was about "ethics in game journalism", even a cursory look at what the movement actually did makes it very clear that was never the focus.
It's not biased to look at what happened and report that people didn't do what they claimed to be doing.
The Grokipedia article on Gamergate claims that Gjoni "revealed" that Quinn was sleeping with reviewers for good reviews, but he himself later admitted he had zero evidence for that and claimed it was a typo that made people believe he was accusing Quinn of it. Why is being outright wrong a good thing?
Apparently Grokipedia give you the option to highlight that section of the text and click "this is wrong" and it will update the text or tell you why not. I don't have a account but someone should try and report back what it does.
Does it? I mean the quoted text doesn't really make much mention beyond the word "allegations" that there isn't any evidence of wrongdoing on Joe Biden's part. In fact, it's written as if there is still some question of validity. Grok is a rhetorical device that tries to paint right-wing reaction to woke stuff as an honest concern for journalistic integrity. If it were really being honest, why is it so often just a blatant point by point contradiction of whatever the wikipedia article says in all these culture war matters?
It's got some obvious bias right now, but some articles are already better than Wikipedia - for example on the origin of Covid. I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future.
> I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future.
Situation: there is one mediocre online crowdsourced encyclopedia
"The crowdsourced encyclopedia is untrustworthy? How ridiculous! We need to develop an AI-powered black-box that replaces everyone's Wikipedia use-cases!"
Soon: there is one mediocre online crowdsourced encyclopedia, and Elon Musk's website developed in response to crowdsourced encyclopedias
It's the Full Self Driving of online research. Who wouldn't trust it?
Your comment history shows no evidence of a willingness to engage in a fair debate, and you constantly create straw-man arguments, even in this very comment.
> I'd challenge someone to provide competing articles on a controversion topic from Wikipedia and Grokipedia and demonstrate how the Grok version is less-factual. Just because it doesn't adhere to your ideology, doesn't mean it's wrong.
Yeah, it's too soon to be making claims about misinformation campaigns. The Grokpedia approach should be on the same footing as Wikipedia was when it was launched.
Use it cautiously and wait for the apples-to-apples comparisons to come out.
I suspect your 2nd paragraph will be less well received here.
> Can anyone give a coherent explanation of why the intention behind Grokipedia is... bad?
If one takes Musk at his word that his only intention is to provide an alternative Wikipedia, there is no problem; it is simply an alternative Wikipedia with a different editorial bias. If one believes that Musk is the modern day Joseph Goebbels, then his stated intention is likely false; Goebbels' strategy was to provide 60% truths and 40% lies, which is expressly facilitated with something like Wikipedia (Grokipedia in Musk's case). There are many possibilities in between the two which seem to suggest the likely fallibility of Grokipedia. All things considered, especially Musk's track record with the truth, it is reasonably assumed that this is a propaganda tool more than an education tool.
Please remember that you asked for "a coherent explanation" rather than something you will necessarily agree with. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who believes the opinions in this explanation.
"an alternative Wikipedia with a different editorial bias"
I think the stated goal is to reduce bias, not to just rotate it to another view. Of course some things are difficult to reduce to facts, but plenty of others are not.
> You're saying there is no objective truth, and there is not point in trying for it?
Not exactly but kinda. I'd like to think it's less nihilistic than this makes it sound, at least. Here's a definition which I think is a good working one:
> A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
To attempt to answer the question directly, there is still agreed truth, such as in the practice of law where a judge decides what facts are relevant to the case. In that context, the legal framework is, barring appeals, simply to accept the judge's "truth"; at least, once they've made their decision. To prevent that from devolving into madness, we train lawyers and judges to understand the meaning of certain legal terms so that they all have a similar understanding and can argue using terms which have an agreed-upon meaning. Still, there is much bias in this. If there wasn't, there would be no need for lawyers. The closest thing we get to objective truth is something like 1 + 1 = 2, but it's still agreed truth.
There are facts, but even the reporting of facts can be biased. Which facts you report, the context in which they're reported, the details that are included, the order in which they're reported. These choices have an effect on how the facts are interpreted; they are a bias. If I want to say, "The sky is blue and the Blue Man Group are entertainers," but you want to say, "Mars is called the red planet and Mars Attacks! is a movie," who is being less biased? Is a news article that reports, "Mars is called the red planet and the sky is blue," more or less biased than either of the other statements? Is one more objective than the other? How come the author didn't mention the tall smurfs if they're unbiased? Surely reporters aren't required to report all of the facts in every instance. How do they, unbiased, decide which facts are relevant to their report?
With the idea of "reducing bias", it is obvious that in order to verify that bias has been reduced, one must accurately measure "how much" bias there is. So how do you do that? Further, how do you do it in an unbiased way? How do you even know if you're doing it in an unbiased way without an unbiased measurement?
Another way to think about it is in terms of opinions. How do you express an opinion without bias? How do you express the same opinion with less or more bias? Is, "I don't care," less biased than, "I care a lot."? Is, "This makes me angry," more biased than, "I'm indifferent to this."? I would say they're equally biased. At least, I can't come up with a good reason to claim that indifference is not a bias. So, neutrality is a bias. I'm not sure what isn't a bias. I guess a bare fact. But, again, that doesn't mean the presentation of a fact is not without bias.
To give an example, it is a fact that Donald Trump is serving his second term as President. Do people often present that fact without bias? It's also a fact that Donald Trump has not served two consecutive terms as President. Is that presented without bias? Both of those decisions are biased: minimally, why would one present either of these facts in a given context?
Or an example of indifference: if someone says, "I don't care about Biden's capability to serve as President," does their indifference suggest a lack of bias? Is it more or less biased than, "I think it's bad that Biden is President given his apparent senility."? Is it more or less biased than, "I think it's good that Biden is President given his apparent senility."?
Biases are simply different or the same, neither lesser nor greater. I don't know how I could even go about measuring bias without introducing bias.
You want to present unbiased but you are deeply biased, deceptive and your comment full of hateful rhetoric aimed at only one side of the discussion. It's always them and never us goes for both extremes of the spectrum.
How was my comment hateful? The far right is as indoctrinated as the far right. But I think most liberals don't realize how much of media is left-leaning.
Because you present something unproven and opaque against something proven and transparent and you want "them" to provide you with something you can't produce yourself. Every engagement with your initial comment would end in straw men arguments of your side. Even if you believe wikipedia is left-leaning I can still look at the battleground of the discussion behind the article. I don't see a feature like this on grokipedia. Your comment is ragebait aimed at one side of the discussion with rhetoric that's used by the other side. I am glad you only disputed the hateful in my initial comment because your bias is blinding.
The article isn't claiming Wikipedia is perfect - it argues that Grokipedia is intentionally deceptive. There’s a difference between flawed and weaponized.
Wikipedia is flawed, weaponized, and *intentionally* deceptive, with a myriad of articles locked down and editorialized by authors to fit their specific worldview, refusing to add information or even links to approved sources if it contradicts their narrative.
The refusal to mention "federally named Gulf of America in the US" in the lede for the Gulf of Mexico (with the Talk page growing ad infinitum with blatantly negative commentary for the president until it was finally purged and locked), the refusal to name the alleged killer Karmelo Anthony in the killing of Austin Metcalf, the attempted deletion of the article for the killing of Iryna Zarutska, overemphasis on Charlie Kirk as "far-right" and a "conspiracy theorist", keeping the title "GamerGate (harassment campaign)" and purposely refusing any mention for what triggered it and motivations involved, instead hyperfocusing on victimizing journalists involved, etc.
Another interesting comparison is the Wikipedia and Grokipedia pages for Imane Khelif. The former intentionally omits sources that don't fit the controlling editors' worldview, as the Talk page shows. Whereas the latter is a lot more balanced and discusses the controversy, with a full range of sources, rather than picking a side.
'Coup Against Reality Itself' seems a bit of an over reaction to Musk's attempt to do a slightly less woke version of Wikipedia. If you try reading it, it's not terrible. It waffles on a bit in the usual LLM fashion.
Most of it is just generic slop, you have to find the specific pages that interest Musk where he has clearly stuck his finger on the scales to make it say what he wants.
Please don't introduce flamebait like this on HN. Context about the author's background can be helpful, but "spreading hate", along with the whole tone of the comment, is inflammatory rhetoric of the kind we're trying to avoid here.
Unsurprising. I just quickly read through the Wiki and the Groki articles on "transgender" and they are entirely different, and the author certainly wouldn't appreciate the latter.
The wikipedia article presents the entire thing as fact without any critique or controversy somehow (funnily enough the authors BlueSky page proudly shares a Star Wars quote: "The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil...") While the grok article is just an AI wall of shit that somehow treads totally different ground.
What a dumb time to be alive.
Was the user mistaken or just anti trans? Were you correcting a mistake or asserting your/Caraballo's opinion?
It just struck me that the word has no meaning now is all.
I'm not sure what you mean. I know we couldn't agree to eliminate the human rights, including the most basic self-determination, of anyone - trans, cis-norm WASP male, progressive, fascist, or otherwise.
people on the autism spectrum are amazingly good at what they're good at and spectacularly bad at what they're bad at. I wish Musk would just stick to what he's good at like SpaceX and Tesla etc.
As an ex Tesla owner, I am amused by the idea that anyone thinks that Musk was "good" at running Tesla. Those cars are cheaply and shoddily made, and have probably the worst service experience in the industry.
It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX.
Edit: I would like to repeat the point that I owned one, for four years, during which it had to go in for service 12 times, four of which were "car is completely dead". And almost every time I had to fight for service. Every Tesla owner I ever spoke in person to described a similar experience. It's funny how online, the message is very different.
Insofar as Tesla has survived at all, I think there's a case to be made that it has been "successful". Challenging the "big three" auto manufacturers usually ends in failure or buyout.
Talk about a coup against reality. Pay the man his due. Tesla produce very competitive EVs. He has been instrumental in the success of SpaceX and Tesla.
To be fair, the one thing Musk has going for him is bringing funding to opportunities and making the most of it.
I wouldn't say that Musk is the only person who could have brought SpaceX and Tesla to where there are now, and certainly there are many individuals who contributed heavily to get them there. That being said, not many people have the money and interest to do it.
Bezos had the money and opportunity to do the same as SpaceX but hasn't been even remotely as successful. He technically started Blue Origin first, but wasted several years not taking it seriously as a rocket company; back then it was basically just a space-themed club for him and his friends (Neal Stephenson, etc.) SpaceX went balls to the walls and never let up. The day to day operations are run by Shotwell and she deserves enormous credit, but we shouldn't ignore the role Elon played in recognizing her potential, keeping her happy and letting her do her job (usually) not getting in her way. And a lot of the dreamer stuff, all the Mars colonization and Starship stuff, has Musk's fingerprints all over it. Granted, none of that stuff has actually happened or worked, but it has clearly been good for helping SpaceX recruit highly motivated talent. If you're a young aerospace engineer with something to prove in 2010, which company do you go to? The one that is sending stuff to the space station and talking about putting people on Mars? Or the one that hasn't publicly done anything and doesn't talk about anything either? SpaceX was run extremely well compared to Blue Origin, not just in terms of day to day management but also their big picture strategy.
The next administration (if there is one) should force Musk to take random drug tests and revoke his ability to run SpaceX on failure. I think we'd get to the bottom of what's going on rather quickly if he didn't have the opportunity to cheat on them.
That has not been my experience with them at all. I've done nearly quarter of a million miles in various Teslas and never had a serious issue. My service experience with them has also been lightyears ahead of the traditional manufacturers.
Musk was definitely good at running Tesla for what matters for a company: making money.
I suspect that just as with SpaceX, he shows off more than he does actual work. He is well known for taking credit for other people work, but you can't deny that he takes credit (and money) for the work of the right people, and it has value!
As for the cars themselves, Tesla is usually in the middle of the pack, with the Japanese on top and Americans at the bottom, making Tesla rather good for an American car brand. All that to say, nothing special on the reliability side, except that people talk a lot about Tesla in one way or another. You probably got unlucky while the people contradicting you got lucky.
Cars… not great, but good enough to turn Tesla from a joke into an OK company selling in a "Blue Ocean"* market. Which isn't nothing, but then a bunch of other electric car companies popped up and now Tesla cars are solidly B-tier… well, except for the Cybertruck which is just a flop.
There is no organization on Earth, private or government, which is better at the launch business than SpaceX. And it wasn't handed to him, he had to sue the government and go up against entrenched contractors with decades of experience.
Musk’s ability to attract talent and capital is undeniable - but it’s not unmatched, and it comes at a cost. Innovation driven by charisma and chaos isn’t sustainable, especially when it veers into ideological distortion.
Interesting that a neutral submission for the launch of and direct link to Grokipedia was just flagged [1] while this highly sensationalized news article goes up after
I'm not a fan of Elon or whatever, but I agree with the parent. "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" does not seem like a title that should be flagged.
The submission is titled "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" and is just a direct link to Grokipedia. It is quite literally the most neutral, non-editorialized submission to HN.
Did you read any of the comments in the thread? It's not done in good faith and it looks like they should have turned the dial more toward "quality" than "quantity". A stable with lots of manure isn't inherently better than a stable with less manure.
I think the comments in this thread bandwagoning the knee-jerk hate against Elon Musk put forth by the submission are a lot more bad faith and vitriolic than in the other submission.
I'm not even particularly fond of the man but this is childish behavior.
Show HN: A big batch of AI Slop & Propaganda Elon Musk did all by himself and no one else but him because he is the number one business man and "World's Best Genius™"
>> This is the construction of a reality production cartel that creates a parallel information ecosystem designed to codify a deeply partisan, far-right worldview as objective fact.
Perhaps if Wikipedia hadn't drifted so far left (on culture war topics, it's fine for science etc), then maybe it wouldn't have been necessary.
They don't deserve a single iota of respect, are a total joke & nightmare for the world, feeding lies and disinformation to the world. Would be plutocrats Koch Brothers, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Chris twitter-poster-shit-show-freaking Rufo?! A whose who of extreme conservatives eager to get us back to the 1850's. Here's some sites from about covering them, in gentle neutral terms, but Manhanttan Institute absolutely deserve more serious lambasting & being laughed out of any polite company. Ad hominem maybe, but absolutely people working in opposition to a better world, trying to drag us into a corporate controlled hell world, and deserving of no regards.
I got the impression Grokipedia (what a lousy name, BTW; there's not a teenage rock band that would call itself that) has been trained on Wikipedia. I compared the entries for "Gallium Arsenide", and Grok's first sections is a copy of Wikipedia, with a an editor-like comment on top:
The word "verify" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ComparePa...Makes me think Grok is also parsing the history and selectively leaving out edits in order to produce a result with the "correct" bias.
Is hasn't so much been 'trained' on Wikipedia but seems to have 'copied' a large fraction of the 'less contentious' (i.e. less politically biased) content of the site and marked it as such in the footer: The content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
Here's an example of such an article, this one on Toroidal Propellers:
https://grokipedia.com/page/Toroidal_propeller
This is not surprising and quite legal given the licence conditions. It is also fitting given the stated intent of 'Grokipedia' as being a less biased knowledge source - if Wikipedia did not suffer from being overly politically biased there would not have been a need for alternatives.
The above example is not a high-quality article - it reads more like a sales brochure - but it does not show political bias. It will be interesting to see whether Grokipedia follows edits to Wikipedia content and if it 'rejects' or 'edits out' politically biased edits.
I'm sure you're aware of the challenges of defining 'political bias' - usually people mean 'political views that conflict with mine', and what 'people' mean, LLMs learn.
Also, do you think Musk suddenly wants to be non-biased? Musk is openly, explicitly, and aggressively biased in favor of his views and against anything that conflicts with them. Wikipedia has a NPOV rule; Musk has a My Point of View rule.
This reminds me of a joke website I pondered making a few years ago 'provemeright.com'. If you are in a bar and you make an outrageous claim and don't want to back down, provemeright.com has your back! Give us 10 min and we will edit wikipedia and create a website with your 'fact' on it!... It was a funny joke when it wasn't real.
I did this once to win an argument. It was probably about 18 years ago so Wikipedia was a bit slower to take things down back then.
Wikipedia, and it's volunteer of editors are extremely quick at checking edits. In university, we once create a page for my room mate and listed his admirable, but odd quirks. It was taken down in a matter of minutes.
They are quick for checking new pages, not for checking deeply hidden updates to semi-obscure pages.
There have been stories of false information lasting for years.
New pages go to a specific pending review queue. Edits on existing unprotected pages are less scrutinised
Arguably the purpose of this site isn't to serve the public or to compile knowledge (it's not user editable at all from what I can see).
The point is to get this thing crawled and given weight by LLMs in order to poison them and bias them in the direction Musk wants: debunked race science, anti-transgender, etc etc.
Why didn't you say debunked anti transgender?
Presumably, a lot of the anti-transgender claims are new enough whole-cloth inventions to not have yet been debunked, while that's less true of the race science stuff.
People need to prove claims. They aren't true until disproved - at least in science, courtrooms, any scholarship, etc.
Why don’t people just ignore Musk?
Musk was never the sharpest tool in the box, and he used to regularly make a fool of himself to his employees by trying to pass himself off as an engineer like Silicon Valley's most annoying suit, but ever since he started falling for the dumbest conspiracy theories, he's been really dedicated (and to his credit, he knows how to be dedicated, though not for long) to making stupidity an intellectual ideal.
It's amazing to see such deep insecurities (in Musk's case, that he's not as smart as the people around him) played out so publicly and by such successful people. Instead of going to therapy, they spend fortunes trying to construct a world that would justify their self-perception. Maybe if an encyclopedia said he was right, Musk could finally feel smart.
It's not just Musk, of course; many people in his political realm do the same. You misunderstand what they're doing, which is why they're so successful and 'get away with it' endlessly. It looks like something you expect, but you're losing the game because you aren't even aware you're on the field playing. You'll notice their followers laugh about 'owning' you - what do they mean?
To the (neo-reactionaries), words are weapons and not conveyers of information. Extreme statements are, in many cases, better weapons than accurate ones, certainly better than moderate ones - they sieze the initiative, put the speaker on offense, put their opponent on their heels because the words are so unexpected and aggressive.
To people who think the words convey information, the words and behavior make no sense. You think you're having a political debate, but they are fighting a war to destroy you. It's like you listening to their signal, trying to decode what makes no sense, when they are really trying to electrocute you.
In a sense I don't fault people for not grokking that (ha ha) but I do fault them for seeing something is wrong, for all these years, and not making the intellectual effort to figure it out. It seems like almost nobody, national and world leaders and leading intellectuals included, has figured it out.
Of course, but at least one of the mechanisms by which those weapons work is to increase the number of people in society with a completely broken epistemology; i.e. they want to make more people stupid, because stupid people could go along with anything.
"dedicated.....to making stupidity an intellectual ideal".
That is a great insult!
Wouldn't it make sense to have these wikipedias created by different llms, and compare them to expose their biases?
Related:
Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
The gap widens. If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point? You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. I think I would just stop relying. Most people would. It's not a new problem, but that wall keeps growing.
I would do the same exact thing I would do if they had linked me to Wikipedia. I would find the place in the article that states their point, look for where it is referenced in the sources, verify the reputability of that source, and then read for the claim in the source to see what it has to say about it. Especially if the source actually claims the opposite of what the article has written about it. Further, for Wikipedia, I would read through the Talk page for the article to see any mentions of bias or potential lies by omission.
Whether it being from Grokipedia or Wikipedia does not change the approach.
> You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument.
Your powerlessness, their invincibility, is part of their propaganda. It's like the reason people act angrily - they are trying to discourage you from approaching them.
Argument doesn't work. You'll be surprised what sincere, genuine, empathetic reasoning does. I find it works pretty well. Take them seriously, have genuine empathy, don't get inflamed - that's the intent of their leaders' inflammatory language: they want you inflamed, to drive a wedge between you and your friend.
It depends on the forum, but I think some level of "flamewar" type stuff should be tolerated for scenarios like this. I'd happily be okay with someone replying to me and saying "you're really fucking offbase and delusional on this because X, Y, and Z" as it provides a quick reality check (or a point to respond to)
> If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point?
First, when arguing on the Internet, I'm often reminded of the "Someone wrong on the Internet" comic:
* https://xkcd.com/386/
Second, I think it worth remembering that you'll have better (online) mental health if you don't try to have the last word. At some point it's best to drop it. This has been true for a long time: Usenet newsreaders used to have killfiles so you could filter out certain people.
Also worth keeping in mind the 'human DoS' aspect of things:
> Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.[5][6][7][8] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate",[9] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki,[1] which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".[2]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Same as Wikipedia: wikis aren’t references. Ask them to cite an actual source. Grokipedia seems to have more and wider references than Wikipedia.
True, but more and wider references seems to imply better when I’m not sure that’s true. Wikipedia is edited and it’s sources are curated. I think that’s a good thing.
> it’s sources are curated. I think that’s a good thing.
Larry Sanger, Wikipedia's founder, does not.
https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/#3-abolish-source-blackl...
I'll disregard that person's legitimacy just the same way as someone who would use Infowars, The Free Press, Breitbart, The Sun, Daily Mail, or Zero Hedge as a source.
Problem, people like that are running my government now
Yeah, that's kinda why I see the gap/wall as a problem that needs to be addressed rather than just accepting it as an unfortunate part of the world. Turns out containment doesn't work; these are real people with real power. Ignore them long enough and someone will leverage them to make an attempt at destroying society.
Reality has a well known liberal bias
I cannot take statements like this seriously because they are nearly universally a nebulous bad faith way for someone to claim "my personal political opinions are objective reality" which is an outright perversion of the scientific method and the pursuit of knowledge at large.
I would say the same to someone who would boldly claim "reality has a conservative bias"
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By the current standards of US discourse, Dick Cheney and both Presidents Bush, and Reagan as per recent advert drama, are "left wing".
By British standards, the US Democrats are dangerously radical libertarians owing to the fact the Democrats support even the slightest right to personal access to firearms. There's only a rounding error of support in the British policians for "republican" policies, i.e. ceasing to be a monarchy.
Musk is, in the UK, supporting a man who identifies as "Tommy Robinson" (real name "Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon"), and has called for Farage, the leader of the UK's populist far right party Reform, to stop leading that party after Farage distanced himself from Yaxley-Lennon.
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winners write history, and Elon is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to put himself at the forefront, even if it means sacrificing humanity future.
It's a classic case of delusions of grandeur, his story will be told, but not in the way he hopes. We just need to tank few more shit years I guess.
I'm a little amazed people still have the perspective of "a few more years" when it is very clear that the Republicans have no intent of offering a free and fair election. The rubicon has been crossed ten times over, they got into power after attempting a coup last time, all the safeguards and people who would refuse are long gone, if they don't succeed this time it'll be through sheer incompetence rather than anything else.
Spot on.
Leaving culture war articles aside, I think having on other subjects, a diversity of perspectives is legitimate. Consider a personal interest of mine, the dark ages in Europe after the fall of the western Roman empire.
The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)) is a one-sided presentation that begins with denying the historical reality of a period called "the dark ages", continues with a history of the term itself, and concludes with a brief section on non-academic use of the term and reiterates the claim that the periodization is a "myth of popular culture". The article barely mentions the events of the period.
If you read the Grokipedia article on the same subject (https://grokipedia.com/page/Dark_Ages_(historiography)), you'll find not only meta-discussion of the origins of the term, but also in-depth exploration of the events of the period, the causes of the decline in living standards, and arguments from prominent scholars on both sides of the debate about the utility of labeling this period a "dark age".
The Wikipedia article doesn't mention Ward-Perkins, a prominent scholar in the camp arguing that the dark ages represented real material decline. The Grokipedia article cites him extensively.
The difference is interesting because Grokipedia's presentation is much closer to the truth. The dark ages really were in fact dark. In some parts of Europe, literacy itself was almost lost. Trade did collapse. Living standards did fall. We have tons of archaeological and literary evidence attesting to this decline. Tabooing the term "dark ages" does nothing to deepen our understanding.
Yet the Wikipedia article is one-sided because, frankly, its editors see themselves as enforcers of academic orthodoxy.
There are thousands of disputed subjects like this outside the culture war everyone gets worked up about. It really is the case that Wikipedia presents one side of live academic conflicts and gatekeeps sources to minimize heterodox perspectives -- again, all having nothing to do with mechahitler or the culture war or whatever.
I'm glad there's more epistemic competition in the world now.
2018 has a lovely progression of articles 'are we living in ___&'s world now', that went from George Orwell to Aldous Huxley to finally Philip K Dick (PKD).
And Henry Farrell nailed it with the PKD article. Dick was obsessed with fake humans, with reality being taken over by all manner of camouflaged invader or alternate reality weirdo coming in and co-opting our reality away from us. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k...
It's a glorious article. And it's totally the sicko shit happening right here. Grokipedia will almost certainly never hold itself to any real standards, will source (if they source at all) the most absurd ridiculous reality window shopped bottom of the barrel garbage, from horrendous sources. Stealing Wikipedia then probably using AI to rewrite a quarter of it to some bias seems absurdly likely.
"Reality shopping on the internet" has become such a major major effort. And Grokipedia is striving to become exactly such an appealing reality, a bespoke weird racist meanspirited place that confirms the invading forces reality against can do human spirit and hope and inclusion and possibility.
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans does so much to capture what is alas so much defining aspects of our time: the slide away from consensual believable reality and into the rabbit hole weirdness and conspiracy theory universes. That the Internet has unchained, taken what would be normal humans & turned them into fakes. This struggle is going to keep going. I wish these fakers all the failure and dejectedment their window shopped view of the world that their fake human perspective here deserves; I hope this infodump is burned down in the future by people happy to see this absurd farce against reality put to an end.
Seems to confirm Elon Musk is evil, no? Especially when considered along with his political "antics" and behaviors? Gaslighting at this scale is unconscionable.
I think how he treated his daughter or bribed women to have his kids was already pretty bad? this isn't really news about musk being morally awful
Mass murderer of 14 million people overseas and however many here due to illegal policy changes at USAID, HHS, etc already cemented his evil status (by the exact same standards historians judge Mao Zedong for the Great Leap Forward).
https://time.com/7298994/usaid-deaths-studies-estimates-fore...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/health/usaid-cuts-deaths-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/opinion/elon-musk-doge-us...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/07/01/nx-s1...
https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zed...
If anyone knew Elon Musk existed by the time of the Thai cave rescue and didn't determine from that who he really is, they may not be perceptive.
Gaslighter, grifter, liar, bullshitter, bully, boor, take your pick.
I don't know that "evil" is a really useful word to fling around, full stop, because it's actually quite subjective.
The word I prefer to use for Musk, Trump, Peter Thiel, Andrew Tate etc., is "broken". What might have been good in them has been destroyed by their upbringing (and their fathers and/or schools).
Musk, like Trump, Thiel and Tate, is a broken person; he would be pitiable if he were not so dangerous. He cannot now be fixed; like Trump he is a malignant narcissist and can only get worse.
People who admire them are either misguided or broken themselves.
Spot on. These people are all severely emotionally stunted and it is both pitiable and dangerous to me. They will never experience the full breadth of human emotion. And they have inflicted incalculable damage on the rest of us.
> If anyone knew Elon Musk existed by the time of the Thai cave rescue and didn't determine from that who he really is, they may not be perceptive.
Took me a while after that to accept it wasn't just an aberration.
My perspective now is that it continues a pattern of behaviour also seen with his response to Top Gear; it's just that when he reacted to Top Gear, I had an even lower regard for Top Gear…
> I don't know that "evil" is a really useful word to fling around, full stop, because it's actually quite subjective.
I agree. FWIW, I think "evil" is mostly a strong overlap with dark triad personality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
But clearly the word is used far more broadly, and it does not reliably keep any meaning from one person to the next.
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They are trying to replicate what happened in Hungary with Orban and to a lesser extent 1991 Russia. The Heritage Foundation is central to architecting and carrying out this vision.
They being the oligarchs, the goal being to privatize public services, consolidate control and power, own the information space, or make it such a mess no one knows the truth anymore, idea popularity trumps facts
Sadly this always works. It has never failed.
Much of Eastern Europe has seen rapid improvements since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Moldova elected a pro-EU instead of sliding into alt-right territory. So to declare it (or anything) never fails is never going to be true. Looking to Russia as an example, what hasn't been failing? They went from being #2 to being a a pariah state
While I broadly agree with you, Russia is not a useful example for this point: the failures as a state to be a good place for normal people to live in are not the important failures, instead look specifically at the oligarchs within it and the power they wield, the money they've made.
Some interesting comparisons I found between Wikipedia and grok. These are the intro paragraphs.
Grokipedia:
The Biden–Ukraine controversy pertains to allegations that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden conditioned $1 billion in loan guarantees on the Ukrainian government's dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016, purportedly to obstruct an ongoing investigation into Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy firm where Biden's son, Robert Hunter Biden, served as a board member receiving substantial compensation since May 2014.[1][2] Shokin, whose office had pursued corruption charges against Burisma's founder Mykola Zlochevsky—including probes into illicit asset acquisition and bribery—publicly stated that his removal derailed these efforts, coinciding with Hunter Biden's role amid the company's efforts to mitigate regulatory pressures.[2][3]
Wikipedia:
The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.[1] As part of efforts by Donald Trump[2] and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.[3]
Grokipedia:
Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that emerged in August 2014, primarily focused on exposing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in video game journalism, initiated by a blog post detailing the romantic involvement of indie developer Zoë Quinn with journalists who covered her work without disclosure.[1] The controversy began when Eron Gjoni, Quinn's ex-boyfriend, published "The Zoe Post," accusing her of infidelity with multiple individuals, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, whose article on Quinn's game Depression Quest omitted any mention of their prior personal contact.[2] This revelation highlighted broader patterns of undisclosed relationships and coordinated industry practices, such as private mailing lists among journalists, fueling demands for ethical reforms like mandatory disclosure policies.
Wikipedia:
Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.[2][3][4] It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.[a] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.[b]
In both these cases Grokipedia clearly comes out on top mostly due to the Wikipedia entries being so clearly biased.
Is the DPRK a democracy? They claim they are, so should a wiki blindly report that they are?
Likewise, it's absurd to claim Gamergate was about "ethics in game journalism", even a cursory look at what the movement actually did makes it very clear that was never the focus.
It's not biased to look at what happened and report that people didn't do what they claimed to be doing.
The Grokipedia article on Gamergate claims that Gjoni "revealed" that Quinn was sleeping with reviewers for good reviews, but he himself later admitted he had zero evidence for that and claimed it was a typo that made people believe he was accusing Quinn of it. Why is being outright wrong a good thing?
Apparently Grokipedia give you the option to highlight that section of the text and click "this is wrong" and it will update the text or tell you why not. I don't have a account but someone should try and report back what it does.
Does it? I mean the quoted text doesn't really make much mention beyond the word "allegations" that there isn't any evidence of wrongdoing on Joe Biden's part. In fact, it's written as if there is still some question of validity. Grok is a rhetorical device that tries to paint right-wing reaction to woke stuff as an honest concern for journalistic integrity. If it were really being honest, why is it so often just a blatant point by point contradiction of whatever the wikipedia article says in all these culture war matters?
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One leftist. Most of them are probably laughing.
It's got some obvious bias right now, but some articles are already better than Wikipedia - for example on the origin of Covid. I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future.
> I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future.
It's the Full Self Driving of online research. Who wouldn't trust it?Maybe it will be a shot in arm for Wikipedia to make some needed reforms.
Probably not. Grokipedia's failure will validate Wikipedia's ban on spurious sources to enforce
We already have people reacting to completely incorrect AI-generated pages about their own lives: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/10/28/Grokipedi...
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Your comment history shows no evidence of a willingness to engage in a fair debate, and you constantly create straw-man arguments, even in this very comment.
No-one is going to accept your "challenge".
An easy prediction is that comparing articles will become standard practice for many people. I’ve already done that today.
So do you have an argument against the concept of Grokipedia?
> I'd challenge someone to provide competing articles on a controversion topic from Wikipedia and Grokipedia and demonstrate how the Grok version is less-factual. Just because it doesn't adhere to your ideology, doesn't mean it's wrong.
Yeah, it's too soon to be making claims about misinformation campaigns. The Grokpedia approach should be on the same footing as Wikipedia was when it was launched. Use it cautiously and wait for the apples-to-apples comparisons to come out.
I suspect your 2nd paragraph will be less well received here.
I'm reacting to the top comment when I opened this thread saying that this confirm Musk is "evil".
Can anyone give a coherent explanation of why the intention behind Grokipedia is... bad?
> Can anyone give a coherent explanation of why the intention behind Grokipedia is... bad?
If one takes Musk at his word that his only intention is to provide an alternative Wikipedia, there is no problem; it is simply an alternative Wikipedia with a different editorial bias. If one believes that Musk is the modern day Joseph Goebbels, then his stated intention is likely false; Goebbels' strategy was to provide 60% truths and 40% lies, which is expressly facilitated with something like Wikipedia (Grokipedia in Musk's case). There are many possibilities in between the two which seem to suggest the likely fallibility of Grokipedia. All things considered, especially Musk's track record with the truth, it is reasonably assumed that this is a propaganda tool more than an education tool.
Please remember that you asked for "a coherent explanation" rather than something you will necessarily agree with. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who believes the opinions in this explanation.
Thanks for the reply.
"an alternative Wikipedia with a different editorial bias"
I think the stated goal is to reduce bias, not to just rotate it to another view. Of course some things are difficult to reduce to facts, but plenty of others are not.
> reduce bias, not to just rotate it to another view
This is not possible.
Of course it is. You're saying there is no objective truth, and there is not point in trying for it?
> You're saying there is no objective truth, and there is not point in trying for it?
Not exactly but kinda. I'd like to think it's less nihilistic than this makes it sound, at least. Here's a definition which I think is a good working one:
https://www.wordnik.com/words/bias
> A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
To attempt to answer the question directly, there is still agreed truth, such as in the practice of law where a judge decides what facts are relevant to the case. In that context, the legal framework is, barring appeals, simply to accept the judge's "truth"; at least, once they've made their decision. To prevent that from devolving into madness, we train lawyers and judges to understand the meaning of certain legal terms so that they all have a similar understanding and can argue using terms which have an agreed-upon meaning. Still, there is much bias in this. If there wasn't, there would be no need for lawyers. The closest thing we get to objective truth is something like 1 + 1 = 2, but it's still agreed truth.
There are facts, but even the reporting of facts can be biased. Which facts you report, the context in which they're reported, the details that are included, the order in which they're reported. These choices have an effect on how the facts are interpreted; they are a bias. If I want to say, "The sky is blue and the Blue Man Group are entertainers," but you want to say, "Mars is called the red planet and Mars Attacks! is a movie," who is being less biased? Is a news article that reports, "Mars is called the red planet and the sky is blue," more or less biased than either of the other statements? Is one more objective than the other? How come the author didn't mention the tall smurfs if they're unbiased? Surely reporters aren't required to report all of the facts in every instance. How do they, unbiased, decide which facts are relevant to their report?
With the idea of "reducing bias", it is obvious that in order to verify that bias has been reduced, one must accurately measure "how much" bias there is. So how do you do that? Further, how do you do it in an unbiased way? How do you even know if you're doing it in an unbiased way without an unbiased measurement?
Another way to think about it is in terms of opinions. How do you express an opinion without bias? How do you express the same opinion with less or more bias? Is, "I don't care," less biased than, "I care a lot."? Is, "This makes me angry," more biased than, "I'm indifferent to this."? I would say they're equally biased. At least, I can't come up with a good reason to claim that indifference is not a bias. So, neutrality is a bias. I'm not sure what isn't a bias. I guess a bare fact. But, again, that doesn't mean the presentation of a fact is not without bias.
To give an example, it is a fact that Donald Trump is serving his second term as President. Do people often present that fact without bias? It's also a fact that Donald Trump has not served two consecutive terms as President. Is that presented without bias? Both of those decisions are biased: minimally, why would one present either of these facts in a given context?
Or an example of indifference: if someone says, "I don't care about Biden's capability to serve as President," does their indifference suggest a lack of bias? Is it more or less biased than, "I think it's bad that Biden is President given his apparent senility."? Is it more or less biased than, "I think it's good that Biden is President given his apparent senility."?
Biases are simply different or the same, neither lesser nor greater. I don't know how I could even go about measuring bias without introducing bias.
You want to present unbiased but you are deeply biased, deceptive and your comment full of hateful rhetoric aimed at only one side of the discussion. It's always them and never us goes for both extremes of the spectrum.
How was my comment hateful? The far right is as indoctrinated as the far right. But I think most liberals don't realize how much of media is left-leaning.
Unintentionally correct, I love it.
this comment was hateful
why so mad, it seems like we agree
Because you present something unproven and opaque against something proven and transparent and you want "them" to provide you with something you can't produce yourself. Every engagement with your initial comment would end in straw men arguments of your side. Even if you believe wikipedia is left-leaning I can still look at the battleground of the discussion behind the article. I don't see a feature like this on grokipedia. Your comment is ragebait aimed at one side of the discussion with rhetoric that's used by the other side. I am glad you only disputed the hateful in my initial comment because your bias is blinding.
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This is bad but if you think Wikipedia was accurately describing reality than you should go read the wikipedia article on "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect"
The article isn't claiming Wikipedia is perfect - it argues that Grokipedia is intentionally deceptive. There’s a difference between flawed and weaponized.
Wikipedia is flawed, weaponized, and *intentionally* deceptive, with a myriad of articles locked down and editorialized by authors to fit their specific worldview, refusing to add information or even links to approved sources if it contradicts their narrative.
What are some examples?
The refusal to mention "federally named Gulf of America in the US" in the lede for the Gulf of Mexico (with the Talk page growing ad infinitum with blatantly negative commentary for the president until it was finally purged and locked), the refusal to name the alleged killer Karmelo Anthony in the killing of Austin Metcalf, the attempted deletion of the article for the killing of Iryna Zarutska, overemphasis on Charlie Kirk as "far-right" and a "conspiracy theorist", keeping the title "GamerGate (harassment campaign)" and purposely refusing any mention for what triggered it and motivations involved, instead hyperfocusing on victimizing journalists involved, etc.
Another interesting comparison is the Wikipedia and Grokipedia pages for Imane Khelif. The former intentionally omits sources that don't fit the controlling editors' worldview, as the Talk page shows. Whereas the latter is a lot more balanced and discusses the controversy, with a full range of sources, rather than picking a side.
"Zwei mal drei macht vier
Widde-widde-witt und drei macht neune
Ich mach mir die Welt
Widde-widde, wie sie mir gefällt"
- Astrid Lindgren
'Coup Against Reality Itself' seems a bit of an over reaction to Musk's attempt to do a slightly less woke version of Wikipedia. If you try reading it, it's not terrible. It waffles on a bit in the usual LLM fashion.
There's some HN discussion of it here which got flagged for some reason https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
Most of it is just generic slop, you have to find the specific pages that interest Musk where he has clearly stuck his finger on the scales to make it say what he wants.
Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago. So this article was already in the can before they could even test it.
> Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago.
Maybe regional roll-outs? I was reading it yesterday.
Yeah, I guess you're right - came out last night while I was sleeping.
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Please don't introduce flamebait like this on HN. Context about the author's background can be helpful, but "spreading hate", along with the whole tone of the comment, is inflammatory rhetoric of the kind we're trying to avoid here.
Unsurprising. I just quickly read through the Wiki and the Groki articles on "transgender" and they are entirely different, and the author certainly wouldn't appreciate the latter. The wikipedia article presents the entire thing as fact without any critique or controversy somehow (funnily enough the authors BlueSky page proudly shares a Star Wars quote: "The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil...") While the grok article is just an AI wall of shit that somehow treads totally different ground. What a dumb time to be alive.
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Alejandra Caraballo is a woman.
Because I dont know who this person is, this sentence gives me absolutely no information about the subject or the person posting it.
The highest post in the chain we're in:
>PSA: author is Alejandra Caraballo [...]
The reply:
>Yep, this whole article is basically just -->his<-- very biased opinions [...]
My reply:
>Alejandra Caraballo is a woman.
I'm correcting them.
Was the user mistaken or just anti trans? Were you correcting a mistake or asserting your/Caraballo's opinion? It just struck me that the word has no meaning now is all.
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The existence of trans people isn't sexist.
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I'm not sure what you mean. I know we couldn't agree to eliminate the human rights, including the most basic self-determination, of anyone - trans, cis-norm WASP male, progressive, fascist, or otherwise.
people on the autism spectrum are amazingly good at what they're good at and spectacularly bad at what they're bad at. I wish Musk would just stick to what he's good at like SpaceX and Tesla etc.
As an ex Tesla owner, I am amused by the idea that anyone thinks that Musk was "good" at running Tesla. Those cars are cheaply and shoddily made, and have probably the worst service experience in the industry.
It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX.
Edit: I would like to repeat the point that I owned one, for four years, during which it had to go in for service 12 times, four of which were "car is completely dead". And almost every time I had to fight for service. Every Tesla owner I ever spoke in person to described a similar experience. It's funny how online, the message is very different.
Insofar as Tesla has survived at all, I think there's a case to be made that it has been "successful". Challenging the "big three" auto manufacturers usually ends in failure or buyout.
I certainly wouldn't buy a Tesla though.
Talk about a coup against reality. Pay the man his due. Tesla produce very competitive EVs. He has been instrumental in the success of SpaceX and Tesla.
To be fair, the one thing Musk has going for him is bringing funding to opportunities and making the most of it.
I wouldn't say that Musk is the only person who could have brought SpaceX and Tesla to where there are now, and certainly there are many individuals who contributed heavily to get them there. That being said, not many people have the money and interest to do it.
Bezos had the money and opportunity to do the same as SpaceX but hasn't been even remotely as successful. He technically started Blue Origin first, but wasted several years not taking it seriously as a rocket company; back then it was basically just a space-themed club for him and his friends (Neal Stephenson, etc.) SpaceX went balls to the walls and never let up. The day to day operations are run by Shotwell and she deserves enormous credit, but we shouldn't ignore the role Elon played in recognizing her potential, keeping her happy and letting her do her job (usually) not getting in her way. And a lot of the dreamer stuff, all the Mars colonization and Starship stuff, has Musk's fingerprints all over it. Granted, none of that stuff has actually happened or worked, but it has clearly been good for helping SpaceX recruit highly motivated talent. If you're a young aerospace engineer with something to prove in 2010, which company do you go to? The one that is sending stuff to the space station and talking about putting people on Mars? Or the one that hasn't publicly done anything and doesn't talk about anything either? SpaceX was run extremely well compared to Blue Origin, not just in terms of day to day management but also their big picture strategy.
The next administration (if there is one) should force Musk to take random drug tests and revoke his ability to run SpaceX on failure. I think we'd get to the bottom of what's going on rather quickly if he didn't have the opportunity to cheat on them.
The next administration should imprison Musk. I don’t think I need to elaborate.
I say:
1) Deport Musk to South Africa 2) Nationalize SpaceX & sell Tesla to GM or Ford 3) Pull the life support cable on Twitter
Yes!!! Seize all usa subsidized assets and send him back to South Africa.
That has not been my experience with them at all. I've done nearly quarter of a million miles in various Teslas and never had a serious issue. My service experience with them has also been lightyears ahead of the traditional manufacturers.
This is a fact. Teslas are not cars that feel quality.
Musk was definitely good at running Tesla for what matters for a company: making money.
I suspect that just as with SpaceX, he shows off more than he does actual work. He is well known for taking credit for other people work, but you can't deny that he takes credit (and money) for the work of the right people, and it has value!
As for the cars themselves, Tesla is usually in the middle of the pack, with the Japanese on top and Americans at the bottom, making Tesla rather good for an American car brand. All that to say, nothing special on the reliability side, except that people talk a lot about Tesla in one way or another. You probably got unlucky while the people contradicting you got lucky.
> It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX.
You can't possibly be serious?
I always hear shotwell does most of the real managing and he only provides direction
It's probably drugs. Before Musk announced he was a druggie, he had a good track record. Since then, it's been weird.
A lot of people turn to drugs when the wealth and fame reaches a certain point. We see it across all walks of life and big tech is no exception
Was that before or after he floated some stupid idea to save those trapped kids and then called that dude living in Thailand a "pedo guy."
Is he even good at rockets and cars or is he just good at hyping them up and attracting funding?
Rockets, yes, he's good at them.
Cars… not great, but good enough to turn Tesla from a joke into an OK company selling in a "Blue Ocean"* market. Which isn't nothing, but then a bunch of other electric car companies popped up and now Tesla cars are solidly B-tier… well, except for the Cybertruck which is just a flop.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy
There is no organization on Earth, private or government, which is better at the launch business than SpaceX. And it wasn't handed to him, he had to sue the government and go up against entrenched contractors with decades of experience.
Even if he was not involved in engineering whatsoever, his ability to attract talent, direct capital, and drive innovation is unmatched.
Musk’s ability to attract talent and capital is undeniable - but it’s not unmatched, and it comes at a cost. Innovation driven by charisma and chaos isn’t sustainable, especially when it veers into ideological distortion.
Interesting that a neutral submission for the launch of and direct link to Grokipedia was just flagged [1] while this highly sensationalized news article goes up after
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
I'm not a fan of Elon or whatever, but I agree with the parent. "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" does not seem like a title that should be flagged.
Neutrality means reporting the truth, it doesn't mean reporting in between both sides.
The submission is titled "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" and is just a direct link to Grokipedia. It is quite literally the most neutral, non-editorialized submission to HN.
Did you read any of the comments in the thread? It's not done in good faith and it looks like they should have turned the dial more toward "quality" than "quantity". A stable with lots of manure isn't inherently better than a stable with less manure.
I think the comments in this thread bandwagoning the knee-jerk hate against Elon Musk put forth by the submission are a lot more bad faith and vitriolic than in the other submission.
I'm not even particularly fond of the man but this is childish behavior.
I don’t find it particularly childish to hate on a man who led the charge to destroy food and medicine meant for orphans. Among other things.
If he didn’t want bad publicity for everything he touched, he shouldn’t have done that.
Should be a ShowHN. There is nothing to discuss by just linking the startpage otherwise. An article like this can be discussed...
Show HN: A big batch of AI Slop & Propaganda Elon Musk did all by himself and no one else but him because he is the number one business man and "World's Best Genius™"
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>> This is the construction of a reality production cartel that creates a parallel information ecosystem designed to codify a deeply partisan, far-right worldview as objective fact.
Perhaps if Wikipedia hadn't drifted so far left (on culture war topics, it's fine for science etc), then maybe it wouldn't have been necessary.
https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically...
lmao the manhattan institute
Ad hominem attack. Nice one.
It's a far-right lobby group.
It seems they agree with Trump on practically everything. So yes.
as an attorney, the lowest form of scum on earth is someone pulling out so-called logical fallacies and thinking that is an argument.
perhaps i thought your clearly biased "institute" didn't deserve any more feedback than that
They don't deserve a single iota of respect, are a total joke & nightmare for the world, feeding lies and disinformation to the world. Would be plutocrats Koch Brothers, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Chris twitter-poster-shit-show-freaking Rufo?! A whose who of extreme conservatives eager to get us back to the 1850's. Here's some sites from about covering them, in gentle neutral terms, but Manhanttan Institute absolutely deserve more serious lambasting & being laughed out of any polite company. Ad hominem maybe, but absolutely people working in opposition to a better world, trying to drag us into a corporate controlled hell world, and deserving of no regards.
https://supremetransparency.org/powerbrokers/manhattan-insti...
https://centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-manhattan-institute
https://www.monitoringinfluence.org/org/manhattan-institute/