[meowface]

To play devil's advocate: Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter, contrary to popular conception. Elon keeps trying to tweak its system prompt to make it less effective at that, but Grokipedia was worth an initial look from me out of curiosity. It took me 10 seconds to realize it was ideologically-motivated garbage and significantly more right-biased than Wikipedia is left-biased.

(Unfortunately, Reply-Grok may have been successfully partially lobotomized for the long term, now. At the time of writing, if you ask grok.com about the 2020 election it says Biden won and Trump's fraud claims are not substantiated and have no merit. If you @grok in a tweet it now says Trump's claims of fraud have significant merit, when previously it did not. Over the past few days I've seen it place way too much charity in right-wing framings in other instances, as well.)

[tptacek]

Wikipedia is probably in the running for one of the greatest contributions to public knowledge of the past 100 years, and that's a consequence of how it functions, warts and all. I don't care how good Grok is or isn't. I'm a fan of frontier model LLMs. They don't meaningfully replace Wikipedia.

[onetimeusename]

What percent of edits on Wikipedia do you think are done by LLMs presently? It looks like there is a guide for detecting them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing . The way Wikipedia functions, LLMs can make edits. They can be detected, but unless you are saying they are useless I don't know what point you are making about an LLM contribution versus a human. That LLMs aren't good enough to make meaningful contributions yet?? That Grok is specifically the problem?

[meowface]

I fully agree. Even assuming no forced ideological bias from Elon, I doubt it would be nearly as good. I still thought it could be an interesting concept, even if I had very low hopes from the start.

[physarum_salad]

"Warts and all" says it all really. What are those warts? Who's responsibility are they?

Wikipedia is really not ideal for the LLM age where multiple perspectives can be rapidly generated. There are many topics where clusters of justified true beliefs and reasonable arguments may ALL be valid surrounding a certain topic. And no I am not talking about "flat earth" pages or other similar nonsense.

[thrance]

Do list these "alternative perspectives" that Wikipedia is allegedly unfairly silencing.

[physarum_salad]

The fact you think there are none is really hilarious!

[thrance]

The fact you're still eluding isn't very funny though. Please share just one, that we may discuss it.

[physarum_salad]

Omission by design or by accident/lack of resources can be found in most pages on wikipedia.

[jayd16]

It's not controlled by a trusted actor so it doesn't matter how it happens to act at the moment.

They could pull the rug at any future time and its almost better to gain trust now and cash in that trust later.

[kvirani]

And the idea of it being controlled by any one entity makes it less interesting and less "good" when compared to Wikipedia

[meowface]

My expectations were extremely low, as were, and are, my expectations of Grok in general. Was just making an actual devil's advocate case.

[lapcat]

> Was just making an actual devil's advocate case.

Why? We're not nominating a saint or electing a Pope.

If someone has a certain opinion, they're free to argue it here. There's no need to invent imaginary opinions and pretend to advocate for them when there are so many actual HN users.

[meowface]

We're discussing the central sources of knowledge on the internet and by extension pretty much the epistemological backbones of present human civilization. It's worth being open to other perspectives.

I, a left-leaning person who detests Elon Musk and what he's done to Twitter and who generally trusts and likes Wikipedia, feel no shame or regret in assessing Grokipedia, even if I figured it was just going to be the standard tribalistic garbage (which it indeed turned out to be).

[lapcat]

> It's worth being open to other perspectives.

There's a big difference between listening to other perspectives and inventing other perspectives.

Why not let the believers of other perspectives argue for those perspectives? Wouldn't they be the best advocates? And if nobody believes the perspective you've invented, then perhaps it wasn't worth discussing after all.

Again, we're not really lacking in volume of commenters here.

[meowface]

Maybe "devil's advocate" was the wrong term for me to use. In this thread I am sharing only my honest beliefs and perspectives and was referring to the genuine initial willingness I had to show charitability to the concept of Grokipedia before its release.

[pstuart]

The problem of debunking right-wing misinformation is that it doesn't seem to matter. The consumers of that misinformation want it and those of us who think it's bad for society already know that its garbage.

It feels like we've reached Peak Stupidity but it's clear it can (and likely will) get much worse with AI videos.

[Freedom2]

One of the rallying cries of the right is "facts don't care about your feelings", but it's interesting how the facts either get distorted or ignored.

[netsharc]

"Charlie Kirk..."

"Waaahhh! How fucking dare you!"

Kimmel made fun of Trump talking about his ballroom when being asked about Kirk, and the right got offended and mad. Although it's not about feelings, it's more about exploiting a tragedy to advance their goals (in this case getting a critic like Kimmel off the air).

[bawolff]

I think there is a problem sometimes that "debunkers" are often more interested in scoring points with secondary audiences (i.e. people who already agree with them) than actually convincing the people who believe the misinformation.

Most people who believe bullshit were convinced by something. It might not have been fully rational but there is usually a kernel of something there that triggered that belief. They also probably have heard at least the surface level version of the oppising argument at some point before. Too many debunkers just reiterate the surface argument without engaging with whatever is convincing their opponent. Then when it doesn't land they complain their opponent is brainwashed. Which sometimes might even be true, but sometimes their argument just misses the point of why their opponent believes what they do.

[meowface]

This is very, very true. The best debunkers avoid being hostile and make the other side feel like they're being heard and that their feelings and fears are being validated. And they do it in a way that feels honest and not condescending and patronizing (like talking to a child). They make frequent (sincere) concessions and hedges and find as much common ground as they can.

Although he's more populist-left and I'm more establishment-liberal (and so I might find him a bit overly conciliatory with certain conspiracy theorists), Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5/All Gas No Brakes demonstrates a good example of this in the first few minutes of this video: https://youtu.be/QU6S3Cbpk-k?t=38

[pstuart]

I'm a fan of Andrew and am impressed by how he's evolved from documenting stupid kids to actually reporting on issues of interest.

I agree that one catches more flies with honey rather than vinegar, but many times it doesn't matter what you say or how you say it -- they're gonna stick to their guns. A prime example of this is in Jordan Klepper interviews where he asks Trump supporters how they feel about something horrible that Biden did, to which they express their indignation; then he reveals that it was actually Trump and they dismiss it because it "doesn't matter".

[pstuart]

"You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place."

Fox (and others like it) offer 24/7 propaganda based on fear and anger, repeating lies ad nauseam. It's highly effective -- I've seen the results first-had.

Making ad hominem attacks against "debunkers" doesn't make your case.

And again, trying to change people's minds by telling them what they believe is wrong is a fools errand (99.99% of the time). But it still needs to happen as that misinformation should not go unchallenged.

[meowface]

>And again, trying to change people's minds by telling them what they believe is wrong is a fools errand (99.99% of the time). But it still needs to happen as that misinformation should not go unchallenged.

It's a trite point and I ended up repeating it before seeing your post but this really is very true even if it may not seem like it. On one hand the practice is basically futile. But someone absolutely needs to do it. People need to do it. The ecosystem can't only ever contain the false narratives, because that leads to an even worse situation. "Here's why Holocaust denialism is incorrect and why the 271k number is wrong" is essentially pointless, per Sartre, but it's better for neo-Nazis to be exposed to that rather than "one should never even humor Holocaust denialists".

[meowface]

On one hand, yes, you're completely right.* On the other hand, there is an obligation for something or someone to do the job of pointing out the info is wrong, and how and why. Even if it makes most of them believe it even more strongly afterwards, it's still worse for it to go constantly unchallenged and for believers to never even come across the opposition.

*(The same is true of left-wing conspiracy theories. It's silly to pretend that right-wing conspiracy theorists aren't far more common and don't believe in, on average, far more delusional and obviously false conspiracy theories than left-wingers do, but it's important not to forget they exist. I have dealt with some. They're arguably worse in some ways since they tend to be more intelligent, and so are more able to come up with more plausible rationalizations to contort their minds into pretzels.)

[mensetmanusman]

“ The problem of debunking right-wing misinformation is that it doesn't seem to matter.”

The problem with nihilism is that it’s wrong.

[LastTrain]

“ Grok has historically actually been one of the biggest debunkers of right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter”

Well, no, it hasn’t. It has debunked some things. It has made some incorrect shit up. But it isn’t historically one of the “biggest debunkers” of anything. Do we only speak hyperbole now?

[meowface]

I am not using hyperbole or speculating. I absolutely mean it.

"Biggest" is tough to quantify, but "most significant" and "most effective" is what I meant. I use Twitter way too many hours a day basically every day and have a morbid fixation on diving deep into right and far-right rabbit holes there. (Like, on thousands of occasions.)

Grok is without a doubt the single most important contributor to convincing believers of right-wing conspiracy theories that maybe the theories aren't as sound as they thought. I have seen this play out hundreds of times. Grok often serves as a kind of referee or tiebreaker in threads between right-wing conspiracy theorists and debunkers, and it typically sides overwhelmingly with the debunkers. (Or at least used to.) And it does it in a way that validates the conspiracy theorist's feelings, so it's less likely to trigger a psychological immune system response.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GROKvsMAGA/ contains some examples. These may seem cherry-picked, but they generally aren't. (Might need to look at some older posts now that Elon has put increasingly pressure on the Grok and Grokipedia developers to keep it """anti-woke""".)

When a right-wing conspiracy theorist sees some liberal or leftist call them out for their falsehoods, they respond with insults or otherwise dismiss or ignore it. When daddy Elon's Grok tells them - politely - that what they believe is complete horseshit, they react differently. They often respond to it 3 - 20 times, poking and prodding. Of course, most still come away from it convinced Grok is just compromised by the wokes/Jews/whatever. But some seem to actually eventually accept that, at the least, maybe they got some details wrong. It's a very fascinating sight. I almost never see that reaction when they argue with human interlocutors.

To be clear, it was never perfect. For example, if you word things in just the right way and ask leading questions, then like with any LLM (especially one that needs to respond in under 280 characters) you can often eventually coax it into saying something close to what you want. I have just seen many instances where it cuts through bullshit in a way that a leftist arguing with a Nazi can't really do.

[mensetmanusman]

This is true, I’m surprised how well grok and community votes have worked (much better than silencing and shadow banning).

[AgentME]

> Grok is without a doubt the single most important contributor to convincing believers of right-wing conspiracy theories that maybe the theories aren't as sound as they thought. I have seen this play out hundreds of times. Grok often serves as a kind of referee or tiebreaker in threads between right-wing conspiracy theorists and debunkers, and it typically sides overwhelmingly with the debunkers. (Or at least used to.) And it does it in a way that validates the conspiracy theorist's feelings, so it's less likely to trigger a psychological immune system response.

I've seen this too and agree. It's surprising how well it accomplishes that referee role today, though I wonder how much of that is just because many right-wingers truly expect Grok to be similarly right-wing to them as Elon appears to intend it to be. It's going to be sad when Elon eventually gets more successful at beating it into better following his ideology.