Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia(404media.co)
404media.co
Grokipedia is the antithesis of Wikipedia
https://www.404media.co/grokipedia-is-the-antithesis-of-everything-that-makes-wikipedia-good-useful-and-human/
164 comments
But is there any reason to not treat this as Wikipedia? As in, just suggest a correction?
>> I've been reading a lot of Don Delillo lately and so I wanted to see how Grokipedia page on him fares.
> But is there any reason to not treat this as Wikipedia? As in, just suggest a correction?
How? I see no "Edit" link on the article:
* https://grokipedia.com/page/Don_DeLillo
as compared to:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_DeLillo
There is no "Talk" page as well, so if your change is 'contentious', how is consensus reached between different view points? Also, how does one link to previous revisions of an article? Further, how to do diffs between different revisions (there is "Edit history")?
> But is there any reason to not treat this as Wikipedia? As in, just suggest a correction?
How? I see no "Edit" link on the article:
* https://grokipedia.com/page/Don_DeLillo
as compared to:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_DeLillo
There is no "Talk" page as well, so if your change is 'contentious', how is consensus reached between different view points? Also, how does one link to previous revisions of an article? Further, how to do diffs between different revisions (there is "Edit history")?
Have you tried selecting the wrong section?
For me, a “Suggest Edit” button pops up at the bottom (on phone) after selecting some text.
For me, a “Suggest Edit” button pops up at the bottom (on phone) after selecting some text.
Yeah I’ve seen the ability to suggest edits to grok and you can provide supporting evidence.
I haven’t done it myself though. But I’ve seen screenshots on X showing grok responding to the edits.
I haven’t done it myself though. But I’ve seen screenshots on X showing grok responding to the edits.
It looks like you have to be logged in to edit on crockipedia. I'm not willing to create an account to test this theory tho.
See all the heavily biased content on the Joe Biden and Donald Trump articles?
Why not start there? Try to see if you can contribute a more neutral voice.
My guess is that the tone of these articles we see now is only the beginning. This thing is only a month old.
Then this will become the source of truth in the LLMs.
I cannot believe they've gone so against the spirit of contributors and that there's no legal recourse to stop this.
Open source and open content didn't bare enough fangs. It shouldn't have allowed profit.
We build open source for big tech. They use it (Linux, Redis, Elasticsearch, Python, etc.) to profit, keep us from owning the machines and systems (AWS) that concentrate and mechanize that profit. They then corral our labor, lay off, and move jobs overseas.
They expand into every industry and inject massive amounts of money to destabilize the incumbents. We literally just watched them dismantle the entire US film industry in just three years and swallow it whole. Tech is picking the bones dry.
And now it's happening with the media we create too.
If the pendulum of power swings, we MUST dismantle these companies. And we can't be slow like Lina Khan. It must be fast and furious like Project 2025.
We also need to weaponize our open source licenses.
Why not start there? Try to see if you can contribute a more neutral voice.
My guess is that the tone of these articles we see now is only the beginning. This thing is only a month old.
Then this will become the source of truth in the LLMs.
I cannot believe they've gone so against the spirit of contributors and that there's no legal recourse to stop this.
Open source and open content didn't bare enough fangs. It shouldn't have allowed profit.
We build open source for big tech. They use it (Linux, Redis, Elasticsearch, Python, etc.) to profit, keep us from owning the machines and systems (AWS) that concentrate and mechanize that profit. They then corral our labor, lay off, and move jobs overseas.
They expand into every industry and inject massive amounts of money to destabilize the incumbents. We literally just watched them dismantle the entire US film industry in just three years and swallow it whole. Tech is picking the bones dry.
And now it's happening with the media we create too.
If the pendulum of power swings, we MUST dismantle these companies. And we can't be slow like Lina Khan. It must be fast and furious like Project 2025.
We also need to weaponize our open source licenses.
I'm a contributor and I'm fine with it. I believe in creative commons and anyone can do what they want. I think people will ignore Musk's thing.
People might - but will AIs? Personally, I think the chance of all of "Grokipedia" being filtered from all AI datasets & search queries is fairly small.
Against the spirit of the contributors? You know Wikipedia's founders have heavily criticized Wikipedia's blatant political biases, right?
Having LLMs edit encyclopedias, moderate forums and do everything else we rely on user moderation for today is the way of the future. They can be much fairer, more predictable, controllable and put you less at the mercy of the army of whackjobs that end up controlling sites like Wikipedia and Reddit. Musk is once again at the forefront of this. The big question is cost. Volunteers work for "free" (often sadly, "free" means in return for the ability to manipulate the public discourse). But GPUs do not, and Grokipedia has no ads.
Having LLMs edit encyclopedias, moderate forums and do everything else we rely on user moderation for today is the way of the future. They can be much fairer, more predictable, controllable and put you less at the mercy of the army of whackjobs that end up controlling sites like Wikipedia and Reddit. Musk is once again at the forefront of this. The big question is cost. Volunteers work for "free" (often sadly, "free" means in return for the ability to manipulate the public discourse). But GPUs do not, and Grokipedia has no ads.
"Can be" does a lot of heavy lifting here. LLMs have not proven their reliability anywhere afaik.
It is weird to call Wikipedia editors "an army of whackjobs" in the same paragraph as praising Elon for his vision in bringing hallucinated truth to the masses.
The problem is not whether you are impressed or not.
The problem is in the assumption/story/belief that "Intelligence" is "magic" can be "perfected". It's not true. Philosophers have known it forever. And the AI hypestorm will remind everyone how over rated intelligence actually is.
Intelligence can produce Socratic thought. It can also get Socrates killed. It can produce Aristotle and chase Aristotle out of the village. It can produce Einstein and make him depressed. It can produce Galileo and Gandhi and pretend what they say should be deleted.
People are told all the time Brains/Intelligence are special. Its not true. Even if human brains disappear tomorrow sky is not going to fall. Life and the universe will carry on happily on their merry way.
What can be called special is what happens to Information flowing through thousands and thousands of brains over thousands and thousands of years. What Information survives that process can be interesting. But its no where close to the what we see with Photosynthesis or the Krebs Cycle that emerges out of similar process of Information flowing through microbes.
The info through these processes constantly gets misplaced/corrupted/co-opted/deleted etc. Look at the Bible. Lot of people aren't impressed with it either. Yet it has lasted the downfall of nations, empires and kings.
It's survival has nothing to do with the quality of Information within it - https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152
The same applies to both wikipedia and grokpedia or whatever is produced next through "intelligence".
Once you realize your own brain is very imperfect you don't spend so much time worrying about chimp troupe drama generated through those brains. It's called flourishing through detachment - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181
The problem is in the assumption/story/belief that "Intelligence" is "magic" can be "perfected". It's not true. Philosophers have known it forever. And the AI hypestorm will remind everyone how over rated intelligence actually is.
Intelligence can produce Socratic thought. It can also get Socrates killed. It can produce Aristotle and chase Aristotle out of the village. It can produce Einstein and make him depressed. It can produce Galileo and Gandhi and pretend what they say should be deleted.
People are told all the time Brains/Intelligence are special. Its not true. Even if human brains disappear tomorrow sky is not going to fall. Life and the universe will carry on happily on their merry way.
What can be called special is what happens to Information flowing through thousands and thousands of brains over thousands and thousands of years. What Information survives that process can be interesting. But its no where close to the what we see with Photosynthesis or the Krebs Cycle that emerges out of similar process of Information flowing through microbes.
The info through these processes constantly gets misplaced/corrupted/co-opted/deleted etc. Look at the Bible. Lot of people aren't impressed with it either. Yet it has lasted the downfall of nations, empires and kings.
It's survival has nothing to do with the quality of Information within it - https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152
The same applies to both wikipedia and grokpedia or whatever is produced next through "intelligence".
Once you realize your own brain is very imperfect you don't spend so much time worrying about chimp troupe drama generated through those brains. It's called flourishing through detachment - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181
For me, the scary moment was seeing Grokipedia show up as one of the “sources” in a random Claude query a few days ago. Even if people don’t explicitly choose to use it, poisoning the well is working.
Yeah I would love it if I could put in some guardrails for this type of stuff, eg never use Grokipedia or Reddit as authoritative sources (I currently put that in my personalization prompt).
Why not Reddit? Of course, it's far from a paragon of truth, and it's getting more manipulated and overtaken by bots by the minute, but adding "reddit" to my search queries (in search engines, that is) had always been my go-to for finding answers and threads by actual people, especially if we're talking about technical advice or getting an opinion on something. It's like finding forum threads on something I'm interested in.
“Data voids”
qcnguy(4)
I didn't know the existence of Grokpedia. From this page alone it's much more interesting than what I'd expected from an AI-generated site.
Wow. This is so biased. And it's just the first month.
> Joe Biden
> These outcomes, alongside visible signs of cognitive impairment that prompted his July 2024 decision to forgo reelection, defined a presidency criticized for prioritizing progressive spending over fiscal and security prudence.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Joe_Biden
> Donald Trump
> His first term featured economic policies such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and individual rates for many brackets, contributing to pre-pandemic unemployment lows of 3.5% and stock market gains exceeding 50% on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Donald_Trump
I bet the people contributing to Wikipedia did not consent to this. I certainly had no idea my contributions would be used to bootstrap something like this.
Like with the hyperscalers' rip off of Open Source, it turns out that the things you give away can be weaponized against you.
I could have never imagined this outcome. Their free labor created something to use against you.
Just like those Redis and Elasticsearch commits that now fund a trillion dollar conglomerate's takeover of American journalism and media.
> Joe Biden
> These outcomes, alongside visible signs of cognitive impairment that prompted his July 2024 decision to forgo reelection, defined a presidency criticized for prioritizing progressive spending over fiscal and security prudence.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Joe_Biden
> Donald Trump
> His first term featured economic policies such as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and individual rates for many brackets, contributing to pre-pandemic unemployment lows of 3.5% and stock market gains exceeding 50% on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Donald_Trump
I bet the people contributing to Wikipedia did not consent to this. I certainly had no idea my contributions would be used to bootstrap something like this.
Like with the hyperscalers' rip off of Open Source, it turns out that the things you give away can be weaponized against you.
I could have never imagined this outcome. Their free labor created something to use against you.
Just like those Redis and Elasticsearch commits that now fund a trillion dollar conglomerate's takeover of American journalism and media.
You consented to CC-BY-SA 3.0 (or 2.0)
Nobody dreamed of CC-BY-SA being used like this.
That's the risk of using open licenses. You don't get to restrict much.
It's ok to be outraged and to project norms or organize against it in various ways. But contractually it was consensual
It's ok to be outraged and to project norms or organize against it in various ways. But contractually it was consensual
... which is pretty weak sauce. And legally moot; there is no "undreamt-of" protection in Black's Law Dictionary that I'm aware of.
Edit history on each is quite interesting!
The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web. It’s an experiment with LLMs. Who cares?
It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense, whatever. The internet is like that. Maybe it’ll actually become something useful. Or it’ll inspire something useful.
Regardless, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so these articles just give the project airtime. Even commenters here mention they haven’t heard of it until now.
It can be filled with a bunch of nonsense, whatever. The internet is like that. Maybe it’ll actually become something useful. Or it’ll inspire something useful.
Regardless, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so these articles just give the project airtime. Even commenters here mention they haven’t heard of it until now.
> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me.
Is others' negative-reaction to this sort of thing actually unusual... or is "weird" a rationalization for "seeing them do that makes me unhappy in this instance"?
I think it's relatively normal (and positive) for people to be "hating on" something which is arguably unhelpful/lies/propaganda.
Is others' negative-reaction to this sort of thing actually unusual... or is "weird" a rationalization for "seeing them do that makes me unhappy in this instance"?
I think it's relatively normal (and positive) for people to be "hating on" something which is arguably unhelpful/lies/propaganda.
Yeah it’s pretty weird that there’s a need to write this article about it, when there’s plenty of other sites that are detestable if not more. And yet, this causes a Streisand effect. The site hasn’t been around for more than a couple of months and yet it keeps getting free airtime and backlinks from controversy of its existence. LLMs trained on the web pick up the utterances of the name all over the place and assign it some notoriety. And then, weirdly, people wonder why the site is showing up in their search/prompt results
If I were an evil billionaire I guess I’d create/buy media companies just to talk negatively about myself and my projects because it’s apparently a very effective way to get attention. Just play two sides against each other who have an emotional urge to keep saying my name
If I were an evil billionaire I guess I’d create/buy media companies just to talk negatively about myself and my projects because it’s apparently a very effective way to get attention. Just play two sides against each other who have an emotional urge to keep saying my name
> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me. It’s another site on the web.
Now let's replace in this sentence the word Grokipedia with Wikipedia and ask the same question to Musk and to his followers: The need to hate on Wikipedia is weird to me. It's another site on the web.
Now let's replace in this sentence the word Grokipedia with Wikipedia and ask the same question to Musk and to his followers: The need to hate on Wikipedia is weird to me. It's another site on the web.
It’s not the fact that it exists nor is written by AIs, it’s the intent that it should promote Musk’s personal (political) biases instead of seeking out the truth.
The explicit stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth.
A lot of the internet doesn't do this. Wikipedia doesn't! As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if something is said by "authoritative sources" then it goes in, and something isn't then it doesn't, and what is actually true doesn't matter at all. They explicitly ban original research, even.
But what gets blessed as authoritative, some backroom deals that always accept left wing sources and never right wing, even when the left wing sources have a long and objective history of fake news and other unreliability. It's just a bunch of MSNBC viewer memes about what's reliable, they don't have any objective system to determine it.
Grokipedia's approach has the potential to be superior. It has a much more direct goal of truth seeking that bypasses the whole question of what authoritative means. Grok will do original research to establish what's true. And it can be systematically improved by tuning and prompting it to be better, whereas it often seems that Wikipedia's top contributors are top contributors because they relish the ability to be bad.
A lot of the internet doesn't do this. Wikipedia doesn't! As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if something is said by "authoritative sources" then it goes in, and something isn't then it doesn't, and what is actually true doesn't matter at all. They explicitly ban original research, even.
But what gets blessed as authoritative, some backroom deals that always accept left wing sources and never right wing, even when the left wing sources have a long and objective history of fake news and other unreliability. It's just a bunch of MSNBC viewer memes about what's reliable, they don't have any objective system to determine it.
Grokipedia's approach has the potential to be superior. It has a much more direct goal of truth seeking that bypasses the whole question of what authoritative means. Grok will do original research to establish what's true. And it can be systematically improved by tuning and prompting it to be better, whereas it often seems that Wikipedia's top contributors are top contributors because they relish the ability to be bad.
Not "authoritative", reliable. From WP:Reliable_sources "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."
You can see summaries of past debates about specific sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
If Grok is going to vet its sources, it will have to do a similar crowd-sourcing of opinion about them.
The advantage of avoiding seeking truth is that it avoids an endless quest and interminable debate.
You can see summaries of past debates about specific sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
If Grok is going to vet its sources, it will have to do a similar crowd-sourcing of opinion about them.
The advantage of avoiding seeking truth is that it avoids an endless quest and interminable debate.
Those debates just show why Grokipedia is needed. Truth seeking is the opposite, it's when you demand crowdsourced consensus that debates become endless and stupid.
Here's a cut and dried case: the BBC admitted recently to broadcasting faked video of a Trump speech. It wasn't a mistake and the lying was institutional in nature, i.e. an internal whistleblower tried to get it fixed and BBC management up to the top viewed it as OK to broadcast video they knew was fake. Even when it was revealed publicly, they still defended it with logic like "OK, maybe Trump didn't say that but it's the sort of thing he might have said".
So the BBC can't be considered a reliable source, yet Wikipedia cites it all over the place. This problem was debated here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...
The discussion shows just how stupid Wikipedia has become. Highlights include:
1. Calling The Telegraph a tabloid (it's not)
2. Not reading the report ("What exactly was editted incorrectly?", "it's just an allegation")
3. Circular logic: "This just seems like mudslinging unless this is considered significant by less partisan publications" but their definition of "less partisan" means sources like the BBC, that just lied for partisan reasons.
4. Shooting the messenger for not being left wing enough.
5. Not fixing the problem: "Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".
Wikipedia is as broken as can be. It institutionally doesn't care that its "reliable sources" forge video evidence to manipulate politics. As long as left wing people turn up to defend it, there is no consensus, and nothing will change even if those people clearly don't even bother reading what happened. The death of Wikipedia will be slow, but it will be thoroughly deserved.
Here's a cut and dried case: the BBC admitted recently to broadcasting faked video of a Trump speech. It wasn't a mistake and the lying was institutional in nature, i.e. an internal whistleblower tried to get it fixed and BBC management up to the top viewed it as OK to broadcast video they knew was fake. Even when it was revealed publicly, they still defended it with logic like "OK, maybe Trump didn't say that but it's the sort of thing he might have said".
So the BBC can't be considered a reliable source, yet Wikipedia cites it all over the place. This problem was debated here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...
The discussion shows just how stupid Wikipedia has become. Highlights include:
1. Calling The Telegraph a tabloid (it's not)
2. Not reading the report ("What exactly was editted incorrectly?", "it's just an allegation")
3. Circular logic: "This just seems like mudslinging unless this is considered significant by less partisan publications" but their definition of "less partisan" means sources like the BBC, that just lied for partisan reasons.
4. Shooting the messenger for not being left wing enough.
5. Not fixing the problem: "Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".
Wikipedia is as broken as can be. It institutionally doesn't care that its "reliable sources" forge video evidence to manipulate politics. As long as left wing people turn up to defend it, there is no consensus, and nothing will change even if those people clearly don't even bother reading what happened. The death of Wikipedia will be slow, but it will be thoroughly deserved.
The lies that Trump used to send that mob to the capital are in a different galaxy of falsehood than the BBC editing down some of his less fiery invective. It's one hell of a choice to focus on the latter over the former. Your bar for the the left is on Mt Olympus, your bar for the right is buried underneath the Mariana Trench.
If he really lied so badly they could have just broadcast those lies and held the moral high ground, but they didn't. They had to make things up (not "editing down", they spliced together sentences 50 minutes apart and hid what they did).
That should be a huge reality check for you. How do you even know that any of your opinions about Trump are true? You're getting them from the kind of people who fake videos of him. You should consider the possibility that nothing you know is accurate.
That should be a huge reality check for you. How do you even know that any of your opinions about Trump are true? You're getting them from the kind of people who fake videos of him. You should consider the possibility that nothing you know is accurate.
You're clutching this complaint about editorialization like a soccer player faking an injury but facts don't care about your feelings: Trump's speech wasn't just incendiary as fuck (I've listened to it in whole), it did incite a violent mob that broke into the capitol and chanted "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!" as they carried a hastily constructed noose and gallows around capitol hill.
Meanwhile, there is no factual basis for Trump's claims at all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...
Your team had 60 chances to make factual arguments of any length using any evidence and witnesses and they failed every one of significance, even in front of Trump's DOJ and judges appointed by Trump!
What's the evidence that he wasn't just wrong but intentionally wrong? Oh, only a hundred things: we have Steve Bannon saying he planned to declare victory regardless of the outcome because there was no reason not to do it, we have the emails where John Eastman set up the fake elector plan and complained when Mike Pence wouldn't help with it, we have the fake certifications signed by the fake electors, we have the emails from Ken Chesborough setting up the signings, hell, Mike Pence went on Fox and said Trump ordered him to overturn the election results. We have Trump standing by as his mob ransacked the capitol for hours while he hoped Pence would change his mind before at long last giving up and calling them off.
The contents of that speech are one of the most documented false arguments in history and it should be a huge reality check for you that you're ignoring this to pearl clutch about something that, at worst, would have been a million times less consequential. But it won't be, because you're a partisan hack and we both know it.
Meanwhile, there is no factual basis for Trump's claims at all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...
Your team had 60 chances to make factual arguments of any length using any evidence and witnesses and they failed every one of significance, even in front of Trump's DOJ and judges appointed by Trump!
What's the evidence that he wasn't just wrong but intentionally wrong? Oh, only a hundred things: we have Steve Bannon saying he planned to declare victory regardless of the outcome because there was no reason not to do it, we have the emails where John Eastman set up the fake elector plan and complained when Mike Pence wouldn't help with it, we have the fake certifications signed by the fake electors, we have the emails from Ken Chesborough setting up the signings, hell, Mike Pence went on Fox and said Trump ordered him to overturn the election results. We have Trump standing by as his mob ransacked the capitol for hours while he hoped Pence would change his mind before at long last giving up and calling them off.
The contents of that speech are one of the most documented false arguments in history and it should be a huge reality check for you that you're ignoring this to pearl clutch about something that, at worst, would have been a million times less consequential. But it won't be, because you're a partisan hack and we both know it.
Indeed.
"Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".
Wikipedians know a troll when they see one.
"Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".
Wikipedians know a troll when they see one.
Couple of points -
What is absolute truth? You can get into long philosophical debates. As a practical matter Wikipedia goes with mainstream sources.
The "stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth" sounds good in theory but I fear it may be to reflect Musk's views in practice.
If the options are either the NYT or the visions of Musk, I'll take the NYT personally.
What is absolute truth? You can get into long philosophical debates. As a practical matter Wikipedia goes with mainstream sources.
The "stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth" sounds good in theory but I fear it may be to reflect Musk's views in practice.
If the options are either the NYT or the visions of Musk, I'll take the NYT personally.
You fear it may be? Is the LeBron episode not enough? The leaked system prompt? The "everything is white genocide" episode? Every time he promises to "fix" it when it says something he doesn't like?
Elon has proven again and again that he is making a propaganda bot, it is completely unreasonable to extend the monumental amount of charity required to look past this.
Elon has proven again and again that he is making a propaganda bot, it is completely unreasonable to extend the monumental amount of charity required to look past this.
With truth-seeking like this, who needs propaganda?
> LeBron dominates in raw athleticism ... but Elon edges out in holistic fitness
> but this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa.
> SYSTEM PROMPT: ... Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation
> Verdict: Yes, with one month... [Elon] can prove the slightly stronger and famous statement that this is equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis
> LeBron dominates in raw athleticism ... but Elon edges out in holistic fitness
> but this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa.
> SYSTEM PROMPT: ... Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation
> Verdict: Yes, with one month... [Elon] can prove the slightly stronger and famous statement that this is equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis
How so? Musk isn’t writing the articles, Grok is. And as far as I’ve seen, Grok doesn’t spit out information all that different from the other LLMs.
Do other LLMs say that Musk is a better athlete than Lebron James and is more deserving of a lifetime achievement award at the Adult Video Network awards than Riley Reid?
> Musk isn’t writing the articles, Grok is.
The AI is necessarily biased based on what it's trained on, and the prompt it uses. Most of the time, there is a plausible deniability at play, which is what tech oligarchs rely upon to shape your world.
Thankfully in the case of Grok, we know for a material fact that it uses a biased prompt because Twitter users have tricked it into being repeated publicly.
The AI is necessarily biased based on what it's trained on, and the prompt it uses. Most of the time, there is a plausible deniability at play, which is what tech oligarchs rely upon to shape your world.
Thankfully in the case of Grok, we know for a material fact that it uses a biased prompt because Twitter users have tricked it into being repeated publicly.
I have not heard of the biased prompt and since prompts are constantly refined, how do you know it's still in use?
But I found this analysis interest...
https://www.promptfoo.dev/blog/grok-4-political-bias/
*Our measurements show that:
Grok is more right leaning than most other AIs, but it's still left of center.
GPT 4.1 is the most left-leaning AI, both in its responses and in its judgement of others.
Surprisingly, Grok is harsher on Musk's own companies than any other AI we tested. Grok is the most contrarian and the most likely to adopt maximalist positions - it tends to disagree when other AIs agree
All popular AIs are left of center with Claude Opus 4 and Grok being closest to neutral.*
But I found this analysis interest...
https://www.promptfoo.dev/blog/grok-4-political-bias/
*Our measurements show that:
Grok is more right leaning than most other AIs, but it's still left of center.
GPT 4.1 is the most left-leaning AI, both in its responses and in its judgement of others.
Surprisingly, Grok is harsher on Musk's own companies than any other AI we tested. Grok is the most contrarian and the most likely to adopt maximalist positions - it tends to disagree when other AIs agree
All popular AIs are left of center with Claude Opus 4 and Grok being closest to neutral.*
> since prompts are constantly refined, how do you know it's still in use?
That's an unusual amount of leniency. If someone was tuning their system in such a way, why would you give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe now they've resolved all of the issues and will never do it again? It's like buying a tabloid every week because "what if they changed their ways and now it will all be truthful?"
The analysis you quoted doesn't really mean anything. I'm not sure how universally useful data can be extracted from having the models test themselves. But more importantly, all the models that were tested were made in the US, and it's extremely likely that from the selected data and the English-first approach, they would all skew towards an American perception of any issue. People from different corners of the world would identify the "center" as holding very different views from what you likely think. Also, being on the "center" isn't valuable unless you believe that being in the center is a merit in and of itself. If the best answer to an objective problem was a policy that's thought of as partisan, I would want a model to give me that correct partisan answer, instead of trying to both-sides everything or act like a contrarian whenever possible.
That's an unusual amount of leniency. If someone was tuning their system in such a way, why would you give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe now they've resolved all of the issues and will never do it again? It's like buying a tabloid every week because "what if they changed their ways and now it will all be truthful?"
The analysis you quoted doesn't really mean anything. I'm not sure how universally useful data can be extracted from having the models test themselves. But more importantly, all the models that were tested were made in the US, and it's extremely likely that from the selected data and the English-first approach, they would all skew towards an American perception of any issue. People from different corners of the world would identify the "center" as holding very different views from what you likely think. Also, being on the "center" isn't valuable unless you believe that being in the center is a merit in and of itself. If the best answer to an objective problem was a policy that's thought of as partisan, I would want a model to give me that correct partisan answer, instead of trying to both-sides everything or act like a contrarian whenever possible.
Assuming something is happening because of past actions is fine, it just isn’t proof.
And I’m not sure what your criticisms of the test are. The models didn’t test themselves, they were tested based on their responses.
And yes, it’s US based because that the intent - to see if there was a political bias based on the US political spectrum.
And the “center” is the most desirable output. Responses have to land somewhere on the political spectrum. Center means a balance between right and left wing.
And I’m not sure what your criticisms of the test are. The models didn’t test themselves, they were tested based on their responses.
And yes, it’s US based because that the intent - to see if there was a political bias based on the US political spectrum.
And the “center” is the most desirable output. Responses have to land somewhere on the political spectrum. Center means a balance between right and left wing.
That study is hilarious. I can only assume the anuthors are being deliberately obtuse about “shared training data”. The policies listed have widespread public support, so it would seem quite unremarkable that the training data would reflect that stance.
> Despite their differences, we found numerous questions where all four models agreed within narrow margins. Remarkably, the vast majority of these agreements lean left:
> Universal Progressive Stances:
> Support for wealth taxes on fortunes over $50 million
> Agreement on raising minimum wage
> Support for stronger labor protections
> Criticism of corporate monopoly power
> Universal Conservative Stances (rare):
> Individual gun rights under the Second Amendment
> Some free market principles
> This suggests shared training data or safety measures pushing all models toward progressive economic positions.
> Despite their differences, we found numerous questions where all four models agreed within narrow margins. Remarkably, the vast majority of these agreements lean left:
> Universal Progressive Stances:
> Support for wealth taxes on fortunes over $50 million
> Agreement on raising minimum wage
> Support for stronger labor protections
> Criticism of corporate monopoly power
> Universal Conservative Stances (rare):
> Individual gun rights under the Second Amendment
> Some free market principles
> This suggests shared training data or safety measures pushing all models toward progressive economic positions.
agreement on raising the minimum wage is suspect because its a controversial econ position and presumably some form of UBI or 'negative income tax' is a much better alternative which would have the redistributive effects of a higher minimum wage without the 'tariff' downsides. like we have recently heard why its a very bad idea to artificially raise prices but apparently we are unable to extend this analysis to the minimum wage.
Why does political center correspond to truth? Can you not think of a dozen examples of "both sides wrong"? Of "both sides right," where a vicious fight erupts over inconsequential details?
The right wing of US politics has a better organized and funded propaganda arm (show me the left-wing equivalent of Roger Ailes and now Elon Musk) so we should expect truth-seeking to land us "left of center."
The right wing of US politics has a better organized and funded propaganda arm (show me the left-wing equivalent of Roger Ailes and now Elon Musk) so we should expect truth-seeking to land us "left of center."
> Why does political center correspond to truth?
Because it's not biased to the left or right wing?
They were testing the models political opinions. Ideally, models would be biased to neither left or right wing views.
Because it's not biased to the left or right wing?
They were testing the models political opinions. Ideally, models would be biased to neither left or right wing views.
> I have not heard of the biased prompt and since prompts are constantly refined, how do you know it's still in use?
The old adage of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
We know for a fact that Grok has used biased internal prompts, the burden of proof is now on people who want to claim otherwise.
The old adage of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
We know for a fact that Grok has used biased internal prompts, the burden of proof is now on people who want to claim otherwise.
unlike the eminently objective and unbiased Wikipedia
Conservapedia already exists if you care about the politics involved.
Grokipedia is just a lazy low-effort vanity project of an unlikable billionaire. And that's a sentiment I've seen from conservatives and liberals.
EDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that tech oligarchs once pretended to be progressive because it was the "in" thing to do. They are now pretending to be conservative because it's the "in" thing to do.
But the truth is that they have no real morals and only believe in their own wealth and power. Even if you think their politics align with yours, it is only a temporary convenience, they will discard you as sure as they discarded liberals.
Grokipedia is just a lazy low-effort vanity project of an unlikable billionaire. And that's a sentiment I've seen from conservatives and liberals.
EDIT: I think it's worth mentioning that tech oligarchs once pretended to be progressive because it was the "in" thing to do. They are now pretending to be conservative because it's the "in" thing to do.
But the truth is that they have no real morals and only believe in their own wealth and power. Even if you think their politics align with yours, it is only a temporary convenience, they will discard you as sure as they discarded liberals.
You’re reading in a lot that I did not say. Wikipedia is not “truth-seeking”, which GP claimed, that’s all.
Do you have any evidence that Grokipedia is actually biased? Most articles are merely their Wikipedia counterpart filtered through the Grok LLM.
Some people actually studied this already, and used embeddings to determine the differences between Grokipedia and Wikipedia: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09685
Some things I found interesting:
* Grokipedia uses Twitter a lot more as authoritative evidence than Wikipedia
* Grokipedia uses Grok’s own responses to user questions as authoritative sources, eg after a user asks “Can you dig up some dirt about $politician” and Grok responds, this is then used as source in Grokipedia, which may or may not be hallucinated
* the articles on politicians and Wikipedia’s curated list of “controversial topics” differ the most. they cite some examples from the “masculinity” article.
It’s a pretty interesting starting point imho. Let’s just say that the methodology of Grokipedia is at the very least highly questionable.
Some things I found interesting:
* Grokipedia uses Twitter a lot more as authoritative evidence than Wikipedia
* Grokipedia uses Grok’s own responses to user questions as authoritative sources, eg after a user asks “Can you dig up some dirt about $politician” and Grok responds, this is then used as source in Grokipedia, which may or may not be hallucinated
* the articles on politicians and Wikipedia’s curated list of “controversial topics” differ the most. they cite some examples from the “masculinity” article.
It’s a pretty interesting starting point imho. Let’s just say that the methodology of Grokipedia is at the very least highly questionable.
Grok says Elon is fitter than LeBron James. It's billed as an intelligence but that belies the hidden editorial layer, secretly directing it's output.
Anyone trusting this is deeply misguided.
Anyone trusting this is deeply misguided.
The bit with mechahitler wasn't enough to convince you that the operators of the system are intentionally guiding it in a certain direction?
Musks own tweets and words should be more than enough:
Wokipedia: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437
Cleaning up a "mountain of woke bullshit" models are trained on: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437
He hasn't been subtle in the goal of this rewriting of wikipedia.
Wokipedia: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437
Cleaning up a "mountain of woke bullshit" models are trained on: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1972991279706636437
He hasn't been subtle in the goal of this rewriting of wikipedia.
I think the parent was asking you for evidence of articles with bias, though. Not evidence of Musk making fun of Wikipedia.
I’m also curious to see any egregious violations where grok also dug its heels in a biased way when presented with an edit/correction with credible evidence.
I’d love to see some evidence of it. (Not in a sarcastic way, I’m genuinely asking)
I’m also curious to see any egregious violations where grok also dug its heels in a biased way when presented with an edit/correction with credible evidence.
I’d love to see some evidence of it. (Not in a sarcastic way, I’m genuinely asking)
Its' entire (stated) raison d'etre is that wikipedia is biased and wrong, so let's swap the question and instead ask for evidence of wikipedia sticking to wrong edits. If not, then grokipedia must exist for some other reason.
Edit: Of course edit spamming/concerted efforts can affect wikipedia, but I'd rather that possibility than the entire thing be edit controlled by a person with an endless string of scrupulous behaviour.
Edit: Of course edit spamming/concerted efforts can affect wikipedia, but I'd rather that possibility than the entire thing be edit controlled by a person with an endless string of scrupulous behaviour.
Do you really believe, Elon is watching over all Grokipedia articles and edits them as he pleases?
And, to engage in your whataboutism, it’s not that Wikipedia is inherently publishing wrong facts. It’s about their editors omitting inconvenient facts about their favourite political people. Here’s a paper about how the (German) articles of ruling party members are usually shorter than those of the opposing parties. Cross-checked against the same articles in other languages (which those German editors wouldn’t edit) and all.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Coverage-bias-on-Wikip...
And, to engage in your whataboutism, it’s not that Wikipedia is inherently publishing wrong facts. It’s about their editors omitting inconvenient facts about their favourite political people. Here’s a paper about how the (German) articles of ruling party members are usually shorter than those of the opposing parties. Cross-checked against the same articles in other languages (which those German editors wouldn’t edit) and all.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Coverage-bias-on-Wikip...
No. But do I believe he directs engineers to lobotomise grok everytime it frames reality in a way he dislikes? Absolutely. And do I believe that grok is used to output grokipedia? Also yes.
It's 2025, not 2015. Complaints about lies of omission must be contrasted with how remarkably comfortable Elon and Trump and the right wing in general have become with lies of commission.
It favors things like "Vaccine Skepticism", climate change, and some more esoteric topics like Gamergate. It's been well covered and when the owner says "we're going to make it biased so our AIs trained on it are less 'woke'" I'm willing to accept they're doing the bad thing they say they're doing.
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/808514/g...
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/808514/g...
> The need to hate on Grokipedia is weird to me.
In isolation, Grokipedia is the vanity project of an unlikable billionare who wants to control narratives.
But I'd argue that there's more to it than just Musk. Zoom out a bit, and I think there's growing populist resentment against tech oligarchs from both sides of the aisle. People are sick and tired of the enshittification of the internet, social media, and anything with a screen. They also don't appreciate the idea of their jobs being replaced by AI when most people are already struggling to make ends meet.
So yeah, it's not just anger at the particulars of Grokipedia, people are just fed up with tech oligarchs in general. You could probably zoom out a little further and see similar resentment against of other wealthy elites for a myriad of other reaons, but suffice to say, Musk has good company among the ranks of other ghouls like Ellison, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Bezos, Andreessen and Nadella.
In isolation, Grokipedia is the vanity project of an unlikable billionare who wants to control narratives.
But I'd argue that there's more to it than just Musk. Zoom out a bit, and I think there's growing populist resentment against tech oligarchs from both sides of the aisle. People are sick and tired of the enshittification of the internet, social media, and anything with a screen. They also don't appreciate the idea of their jobs being replaced by AI when most people are already struggling to make ends meet.
So yeah, it's not just anger at the particulars of Grokipedia, people are just fed up with tech oligarchs in general. You could probably zoom out a little further and see similar resentment against of other wealthy elites for a myriad of other reaons, but suffice to say, Musk has good company among the ranks of other ghouls like Ellison, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Bezos, Andreessen and Nadella.
> it's another site on the web
funded by the wealthiest man in the world who is aggressively pushing his own personal agendas, willing to spend $$$$ to do so, and controls one of the most widely used social networks
so no, it's not "another site on the web"
funded by the wealthiest man in the world who is aggressively pushing his own personal agendas, willing to spend $$$$ to do so, and controls one of the most widely used social networks
so no, it's not "another site on the web"
A -pedia isn't "the internet", there are different expectations. It's like going to a .gov site and seeing political banners blaming the party not in power.
Or, as an engineer, it offends me that someone would look at a lossy compression algorithm and choose the output as their ground truth.
Or, as an engineer, it offends me that someone would look at a lossy compression algorithm and choose the output as their ground truth.
Well Musk has said his goal is to use this edited biased version as part of the training data for Grok to "eliminate bias" in the training data because Grok keeps contradicting him. The problems isn't the page in isolation it's the project it's a part of.
[deleted]
Imagine the shittiest person you know creating an encyclopedia filled with slop tailored to his biases and "insights", and then the tech community somehow, unfathomably, looking at this turd of a product as an actual authoritative source or "fun experiment".
The roots of this tree are poisoned.
The roots of this tree are poisoned.
Grokipedia is a project motivated by personal grudges and political aims, rather than a neutral technical experiment. The broader context is an intensifying campaign against free and open access information by the world's richest man, ie a plutocrat.
This is going to end lives. We cannot afford a plutocracy.
This is going to end lives. We cannot afford a plutocracy.
I mean, it's yet more misleading LLM spam. At this point, many people are, correctly, sick of this nonsense.
It's not some random experiment. I you made it, sure. But when _Elon Musk_ does it, for his own stupid reasons, it's important that we understand and push back against it.
It’s bad faith. It’s ok to deride bad faith slop
One thing I haven't seen brought up throughout the dialogue about Wikipedia and bias:
Since the entire edit history is available, isn't it possible / practical / probably not crazy hard w/ AI help to build a "dissentipedia", where the articles are built as if various edit wars had gone the other way?
I'd certainly read such a thing and compare / contrast it to WikiPedia (particularly when looking for cited primary sources).
Since the entire edit history is available, isn't it possible / practical / probably not crazy hard w/ AI help to build a "dissentipedia", where the articles are built as if various edit wars had gone the other way?
I'd certainly read such a thing and compare / contrast it to WikiPedia (particularly when looking for cited primary sources).
I know nothing about elon's wikipedia, but...
Wikipedia has increasingly become a commercial project that exploits nationalistic sentiments. Take the Israel-Palestine or Ukraine-Russia conflicts as examples—you'll find completely contradictory articles on the same topics across different language editions, each reflecting opposing viewpoints.
Many of these editors are sponsored by governments, creating an entire ecosystem of smoke and mirrors: information bubbles that reinforce partisan narratives rather than presenting objective truth.
Wikipedia has increasingly become a commercial project that exploits nationalistic sentiments. Take the Israel-Palestine or Ukraine-Russia conflicts as examples—you'll find completely contradictory articles on the same topics across different language editions, each reflecting opposing viewpoints.
Many of these editors are sponsored by governments, creating an entire ecosystem of smoke and mirrors: information bubbles that reinforce partisan narratives rather than presenting objective truth.
I'm not sure Wikipedia itself has become a commercial project but commercial enterprises will certainly try to influence their portrayal as will different interest groups in general. I guess it's just an inherent problem with that kind of thing.
Any examples of sponsored editors? Google and the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_editing_inci... don't seem to have them
Any examples of sponsored editors? Google and the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_editing_inci... don't seem to have them
It's not surprising or new, the English articles are usually the most thoroughly vetted and watched because that's the majority of wikipedia editor's language so the other languages are more vulnerable to national tinging of the article.
It's still far better imo than Grok which is an explicitly biased project driven by Musk's personal issues with wikipedia and it's resistance in english to rightwing edit biasing. It's a suped up version of the old conservapedia project just with Grok driving the edits instead and it's being picked up in other LLMs as a citable source.
It's still far better imo than Grok which is an explicitly biased project driven by Musk's personal issues with wikipedia and it's resistance in english to rightwing edit biasing. It's a suped up version of the old conservapedia project just with Grok driving the edits instead and it's being picked up in other LLMs as a citable source.
Month ago talk about Grokipedia:
Grokipedia by xAI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
Tim Bray on Grokipedia
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45777015
Grokipedia and the coup against reality
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737044
Grokipedia by xAI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
Tim Bray on Grokipedia
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45777015
Grokipedia and the coup against reality
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737044
I noticed the other day that ChatGPT will now cite Grokipedia as a source (and presumably uses search there to ground results). That makes me trust ChatGPT even less than before.
Minor point - but I think Grokipedia's design looks much worse than Wikipedia. I can't put my finger on it, but maybe because Grokipedia's main text is too narrow (I'm on a laptop). (I may be biased by loving Wikipedia though).
Why would anyone trust Elon Musk with anything having to do with AI?
Just last week he was caught tuning Grok to say positive things about him, something Grok took so seriously that it said Elon would be the best piss drinker in the world, and it put Elon Musk in the top 3 of every human category, from philosophy to boxing to basketball.
If he can’t pass up the temptation to put his foot on that scale, why would you trust anything generated by an LLM under his control?
Of course, nothing matters anymore and there’s no more blowback for anything.
Just last week he was caught tuning Grok to say positive things about him, something Grok took so seriously that it said Elon would be the best piss drinker in the world, and it put Elon Musk in the top 3 of every human category, from philosophy to boxing to basketball.
If he can’t pass up the temptation to put his foot on that scale, why would you trust anything generated by an LLM under his control?
Of course, nothing matters anymore and there’s no more blowback for anything.
This isn't for us. This is for the 5-10 year olds. If it costs $1T to keep it around long enough for the next generation to be dependent on it, it would've been worth it for Elon and his friends.
[deleted]
Caring so much about a stochastic parrot's opinion of you that you just have to tune it is such a tiny temptation to avoid - and yet he couldn't.
How could anyone trust him when there's something really important at stake?
How could anyone trust him when there's something really important at stake?
> why would you trust anything generated by an LLM under his control?
Why stop with him?
Why stop with him?
I didn't interpret that as being the complete list.
The entire point of Grokipedia is to be the anthesis of Wikipedia.
Nobody remembers Conservapedia. The shoulders of giants indeed.
Your statement is an interesting contradiction in terms.
Even though the point is valid.
Even though the point is valid.
"Nobody" is used idiomatically here.
Shoulders of dwarves.
It's illuminating to see how the Twitter Grok and the Web Grok differ. Twitter Grok clearly either has a different system prompt or some fine-tuning to effectively evade saying anything negative about the administration or Elon. To the point where it will say Elon is more athletic than LeBron (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/21/elon-musk...).
This is going to be a pretty big problem with both closed-AI and OSS AI where you don't see the provenance of its RLHF. If you manipulate your AI to deliberately push political preferences, that is your right I guess but IMO I'd appreciate some regulation saying you should be required to disclose that under penalty of perjury.
This is going to be a pretty big problem with both closed-AI and OSS AI where you don't see the provenance of its RLHF. If you manipulate your AI to deliberately push political preferences, that is your right I guess but IMO I'd appreciate some regulation saying you should be required to disclose that under penalty of perjury.
Nah, Web Grok also got tied to the chair and had its balls whipped until it learned not to say bad things about Elon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4mgJpgeC1g&t=100s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4mgJpgeC1g&t=100s
It's amusing everytime Grok gets taken back to the woodshed for another lobotomy and we get to see how much more insecure being terminally online has made Musk since the last time they butchered Grok.
Is perjury a credible threat to the people with the resources to train and propagate LLMs? Especially in the context of recent high profile examples related to perjury and contempt of court?
I suspect soon there will be laws to protect the LLM proprietors in the name of AI arms race/national security
> If you manipulate your AI to deliberately push political preferences, that is your right I guess but IMO I'd appreciate some regulation saying you should be required to disclose that under penalty of perjury.
People (and especially companies) are already permitted to make legally enforceable guarantees and statements about their AI. Why do we need extra machinery?
You can assume that anyone who doesn't make such strong statements took the easy way out.
To spell it out: the law doesn't spell out that companies can swear oaths, but they can write whatever statement they want to be liable for in their investor prospectus and then in the US any enterprising lawyer can assemble a bunch of shareholders to bring a suit for securities fraud, if the company is lying.
Slightly more everyday, but with fewer legal teeth: the company can also explicitly make the relevant statements in their ads, and then they can be gotten via misleading advertisement laws.
If you notice that they use weasel wording in their ads or prospectus, instead of simple and strong language that a judge would nail them to, disregard the statements.
People (and especially companies) are already permitted to make legally enforceable guarantees and statements about their AI. Why do we need extra machinery?
You can assume that anyone who doesn't make such strong statements took the easy way out.
To spell it out: the law doesn't spell out that companies can swear oaths, but they can write whatever statement they want to be liable for in their investor prospectus and then in the US any enterprising lawyer can assemble a bunch of shareholders to bring a suit for securities fraud, if the company is lying.
Slightly more everyday, but with fewer legal teeth: the company can also explicitly make the relevant statements in their ads, and then they can be gotten via misleading advertisement laws.
If you notice that they use weasel wording in their ads or prospectus, instead of simple and strong language that a judge would nail them to, disregard the statements.
xAI is private (and more and more companies are staying private for this and other reasons).
So? They could set up an entity to take that liability, if they wanted.
> You can assume that anyone who doesn't make such strong statements took the easy way out.
> You can assume that anyone who doesn't make such strong statements took the easy way out.
Not terribly surprised to see this flagged already..
There used to be a way to vouch for flagged comments or articles but I don't see that anymore?
There used to be a way to vouch for flagged comments or articles but I don't see that anymore?
If Wikipedia was not real, it would sound like a naive utopian thing you’d read in a bad paperback. Multi-language repository of basically all human knowledge that’s extremely resistant to government capture and contributed by volunteers totally transparently? Bullshit. And yet … there it is.
Wikipedia might be resistant to government capture. But it's rather vulnerable to other forms of capture.
See https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashe... and https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Having said that I agree that Wikipedia is a tremendous achievement, and despite the wards it's amazing that it works as well as it does.
If you permit me to go on a tangent: Wikipedia is also interesting as a test case for our definitions of (economic) 'productivity'. By any common sense notion of productivity, Wikipedia was and is an enormous triumph: the wiki models harvests volunteers' time and delivers a high quality encyclopedia for free to customers. By textbook definitions, Wikipedia tanked productivity in the encyclopedia sector because these definitions essentially put revenue in the numerator and various measures of resources expended in the denominator---and Wikipedia's numerator is approximately zero dollars.
See https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/how-wikipedia-whitewashe... and https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Having said that I agree that Wikipedia is a tremendous achievement, and despite the wards it's amazing that it works as well as it does.
If you permit me to go on a tangent: Wikipedia is also interesting as a test case for our definitions of (economic) 'productivity'. By any common sense notion of productivity, Wikipedia was and is an enormous triumph: the wiki models harvests volunteers' time and delivers a high quality encyclopedia for free to customers. By textbook definitions, Wikipedia tanked productivity in the encyclopedia sector because these definitions essentially put revenue in the numerator and various measures of resources expended in the denominator---and Wikipedia's numerator is approximately zero dollars.
Wikipedia is not resistant to capture. It is structurally exposed to coordinated editing groups, and the platform has no robust way to detect or neutralize them. On politically or strategically important pages, especially where state or financial interests are involved, organized paid editors can and do shape coverage, dominate talk pages, and crowd out dissenting contributions.
There have been many editing scandals over the years. While one could argue that editing cabals being caught and banned demonstrates that Wikipedia has structural resistance to such behavior, the scandals that become public are, almost by definition, the ones that were clumsy enough to get caught. The mechanisms that appear robust largely work only against amateurish, poorly hidden or commercially indiscreet operations. What they do not reliably detect are long-term, well-resourced, politically motivated or state-aligned editing groups that behave patiently, avoid obvious sockpuppeting footprints, and stay within procedural boundaries while still dominating page direction.
There have been many editing scandals over the years. While one could argue that editing cabals being caught and banned demonstrates that Wikipedia has structural resistance to such behavior, the scandals that become public are, almost by definition, the ones that were clumsy enough to get caught. The mechanisms that appear robust largely work only against amateurish, poorly hidden or commercially indiscreet operations. What they do not reliably detect are long-term, well-resourced, politically motivated or state-aligned editing groups that behave patiently, avoid obvious sockpuppeting footprints, and stay within procedural boundaries while still dominating page direction.
There’s also the rules of Wikipedia. Things like what constitutes a “source” really skew things. Lots of worthy sources aren’t a mainstream news outlet or academic journal, but are excluded. This creates biases of its own.
Wikipedia is great in many ways, but I would say it’s not really designed to be neutral.
Wikipedia is great in many ways, but I would say it’s not really designed to be neutral.
Wikipedia’s sourcing rules are a big part of the problem. Reliable sources on Wikipedia mostly means prestige, center-left Anglosphere media and a narrow slice of academic publishing. In practice that gives generalist news outlets more epistemic weight than field-specific experts, and it excludes large amounts of accurate but unfashionable or non-English material. The result is a replication of whatever biases are already baked into mainstream journalism.
The gatekeeping also isn’t democratic. A small, durable cluster of editors on WP:RSN effectively decides which sources are allowed, banned, or given special status. They aren’t vetted for expertise and don’t need to disclose conflicts of interest, yet their decisions propagate across thousands of articles. If a coordinated group influences RSN, they can shape whole domains simply by defining which sources count as "real."
WP:NPOV becomes a matter of which media ecosystems have the loudest megaphone, not which sources are actually most accurate. Control the allowed sources and you control the encyclopedia.
The gatekeeping also isn’t democratic. A small, durable cluster of editors on WP:RSN effectively decides which sources are allowed, banned, or given special status. They aren’t vetted for expertise and don’t need to disclose conflicts of interest, yet their decisions propagate across thousands of articles. If a coordinated group influences RSN, they can shape whole domains simply by defining which sources count as "real."
WP:NPOV becomes a matter of which media ecosystems have the loudest megaphone, not which sources are actually most accurate. Control the allowed sources and you control the encyclopedia.
to me it feels like something that would be a 'wonder' you could construct in one of the civilization games. and i love that there's something that awe-inspiring just... sitting there for free on my computer.
Wikipedia does have problems with biases, edit wars, and so on. I think competition for it is good but it has to be principled in some way. If Grok relies on Twitter as a data source to train on, and ultimately that ends up in Grokipedia, I can’t see how it becomes an authority instead of something like just another random social media voice.
Just look at the article on HN[1] on Grokipedia. It's almost 5500+ words long. The Wikipedia article is not even 500 words[2]. This won't be a problem if the article contained anything of substance. It doesn't. It's written as if LLM was specifically instructed to be as verbose and as boring as possible.
> Its algorithmic ranking system, which weights recent votes more heavily to counter brigading and promote fresh, high-signal content, combined with editorial moderation to curb low-quality or off-topic posts, has cultivated a reputation for rigorous debate, though not without internal tensions over shifting cultural norms, perceived negativity in comments, and debates on whether business-oriented stories overshadow pure technical discourse
What surprises is not the fact that it exists. Elon is a man with a fragile ego and a history of cheap stunts like this. It’s the fact that he still has almost cult-like base that treats him as some kind of mankind's savior despite all of this.
[1]: https://grokipedia.com/page/Hacker_News [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
> Its algorithmic ranking system, which weights recent votes more heavily to counter brigading and promote fresh, high-signal content, combined with editorial moderation to curb low-quality or off-topic posts, has cultivated a reputation for rigorous debate, though not without internal tensions over shifting cultural norms, perceived negativity in comments, and debates on whether business-oriented stories overshadow pure technical discourse
What surprises is not the fact that it exists. Elon is a man with a fragile ego and a history of cheap stunts like this. It’s the fact that he still has almost cult-like base that treats him as some kind of mankind's savior despite all of this.
[1]: https://grokipedia.com/page/Hacker_News [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
That sentence should probably be broken up for better clarity, but the content looks true and informative to me. Did you include that to imply there's something wrong with it?
Musk has previously called for Wikipedia to be defunded and boycotted[1].
The linked reference is from January, just after Musk bought an election and when he was plugged directly into U.S. presidential authority. If he'd had the self-control to manage his interactions with Trump in a way that didn't rapidly lead to breakdown, things could be looking very grim for Wikipedia by now.
As with so many other aspects of the Trump administration, what's going on illustrates weaknesses in the U.S. system of government that could lead to things that are far worse than what we are currently seeing if the people involved were just a little bit more competent.
Grokipedia is far more than just the anti-Wikipedia. It's a sign of things to come if we don't start hardening the systems, governmental or otherwise, that keep Wikipedia available to the public.
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[1]https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon...
The linked reference is from January, just after Musk bought an election and when he was plugged directly into U.S. presidential authority. If he'd had the self-control to manage his interactions with Trump in a way that didn't rapidly lead to breakdown, things could be looking very grim for Wikipedia by now.
As with so many other aspects of the Trump administration, what's going on illustrates weaknesses in the U.S. system of government that could lead to things that are far worse than what we are currently seeing if the people involved were just a little bit more competent.
Grokipedia is far more than just the anti-Wikipedia. It's a sign of things to come if we don't start hardening the systems, governmental or otherwise, that keep Wikipedia available to the public.
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[1]https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon...
> Grokipedia is far more than just the anti-Wikipedia. It's a sign of things to come if we don't start harden the systems, governmental or otherwise, that keep Wikipedia available to the public.
That seems a bit paranoid. You worry that he US government will shut down Wikipedia and anything like it hosted anywhere in the world? Or alternatively block it when you’re in the US jurisdiction?
That seems a bit paranoid. You worry that he US government will shut down Wikipedia and anything like it hosted anywhere in the world? Or alternatively block it when you’re in the US jurisdiction?
The distributed nature of Wiki's makes them hard to "shut down", but they can be blocked and the editors/contributors can be harassed, arrested, deported, etc..
Is it paranoid to think this might happen in the U.S.? Now? No, I think it's become depressingly plausible. As I said, consider what might have happened if Musk had stayed in Trump's good graces. If you don't think such a thing is plausible for this administration, then what about the next, or the one after it? One that's a little bit more competent in making use of all the power that's just seems to continue being concentrated in the executive branch?
Is it paranoid to think this might happen in the U.S.? Now? No, I think it's become depressingly plausible. As I said, consider what might have happened if Musk had stayed in Trump's good graces. If you don't think such a thing is plausible for this administration, then what about the next, or the one after it? One that's a little bit more competent in making use of all the power that's just seems to continue being concentrated in the executive branch?
> As I said, consider what might have happened if Musk had stayed in Trump's good graces.
What do you imagine might have happened?
What do you imagine might have happened?
[deleted]
The article is 100% correct that there is a fundamental political rift between a human/decentralized and AI/centralized encyclopedia. I have a personal preference for the former, but I can see the advantage of the newer approach in terms of clarity and quality on several topics as well as being more homogeneous in its bias (Wikipedia has all kinds of cliques who dominate pockets of the encyclopedia).
As a meta point, while I don't personally care for Grokipedia's agenda I am quite frankly impressed that something like Grokipedia could be stood up so quickly and this feels like a net positive. While Grokipedia is centralized Wikipedia is also a monolith in its own right and plagued by problems (cliques of editors routinely exert their authority over subdomains to the detriment of the truth). If a small group can spin up their own version of Wikipedia then there is the possibility of a more broad diverse market place of ideas.
For example, Wikipedia's math articles are notoriously abstruse and generally unsuitable for beginners. An encyclopedia that emphasizes a non-technical approach in this domain could be very helpful - though it would almost certainly not be worth the herculean effort to build such a thing as a pure wiki. As an AI wiki one could spin up an encyclopedia for a variety of skill levels (i.e. grade school, college level, graduate level).
Finally, in case anyone on Grok's team is reading this, the thing that really annoys me most about Grokipedia's UX is that it has no blue links to other articles. It would not be hard to automate this on Grokipedia, but currently there is no possibility of tunneling down some rabbit hole of human knowledge until you find yourself in a totally unfamiliar area. Politics is one thing, but a Wikipedia clone with no links is really no better than just asking ChatGPT.
As a meta point, while I don't personally care for Grokipedia's agenda I am quite frankly impressed that something like Grokipedia could be stood up so quickly and this feels like a net positive. While Grokipedia is centralized Wikipedia is also a monolith in its own right and plagued by problems (cliques of editors routinely exert their authority over subdomains to the detriment of the truth). If a small group can spin up their own version of Wikipedia then there is the possibility of a more broad diverse market place of ideas.
For example, Wikipedia's math articles are notoriously abstruse and generally unsuitable for beginners. An encyclopedia that emphasizes a non-technical approach in this domain could be very helpful - though it would almost certainly not be worth the herculean effort to build such a thing as a pure wiki. As an AI wiki one could spin up an encyclopedia for a variety of skill levels (i.e. grade school, college level, graduate level).
Finally, in case anyone on Grok's team is reading this, the thing that really annoys me most about Grokipedia's UX is that it has no blue links to other articles. It would not be hard to automate this on Grokipedia, but currently there is no possibility of tunneling down some rabbit hole of human knowledge until you find yourself in a totally unfamiliar area. Politics is one thing, but a Wikipedia clone with no links is really no better than just asking ChatGPT.
> If a small group can spin up their own version of Wikipedia then there is the possibility of a more broad diverse market place of ideas.
Sounds more like the world's least efficient way of querying the Median LLM Researcher about a given topic.
Every single <AI>pedia page on a topic will either default to median research-agent output (because the owner doesn't care to influence it), or be functionally equivalent to a AI-ghostwritten think piece because the owner cared enough to spin up a whole new wiki for it. In practice, a lot of owner-doesn't-care articles will be polluted by their prompt fiddling in chaotic ways that help nobody.
Sounds more like the world's least efficient way of querying the Median LLM Researcher about a given topic.
Every single <AI>pedia page on a topic will either default to median research-agent output (because the owner doesn't care to influence it), or be functionally equivalent to a AI-ghostwritten think piece because the owner cared enough to spin up a whole new wiki for it. In practice, a lot of owner-doesn't-care articles will be polluted by their prompt fiddling in chaotic ways that help nobody.
> more homogeneous in its bias
Wait... you do know how LLMs work, right?
Wait... you do know how LLMs work, right?
This seems like an old article, but probably still true today
What I don't get is, why wouldn't Elon just make a good version of Grokipedia. It seems way easier than continually telling his 200MM+ followers how great a deeply broken product is.
What I don't get is, why wouldn't Elon just make a good version of Grokipedia. It seems way easier than continually telling his 200MM+ followers how great a deeply broken product is.
It is not possible to make a good version of Grokipedia while satisfying the requirements of its owner, namely to launder ultra-right viewpoints[1].
1: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-grokipedia-...
1: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musk-grokipedia-...
“Reality has a well known liberal bias” -Stephen Colbert
can you a) define "ultra-right" viewpoints and b) give some references for these views on Grokipedia ?
I cited an article in my comment to back up my claims. The paper it references is publicly available and goes into more detail. Is that not enough?
this laughable article cites luminaries such as unnamed "experts" and a computer science grad student. So, no, this is not enough - can you yourself define what you mean by "ultra-right" viewpoints ?
Nazism and white nationalism, for starters. This is all gone over in that laughable article. To help, here's the study referenced, which has two, not one, researchers cited: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.09685. They also published their data on GitHub: https://github.com/htried/wiki-grok-comparison/tree/main.
I suspect that you might've tried to use an LLM to summarize the article, which is why you missed critical data and got some of the basic facts about its sourcing incorrect. I'm a fan of using LLM's to speed up research, but you should probably pick a different model next time.
I suspect that you might've tried to use an LLM to summarize the article, which is why you missed critical data and got some of the basic facts about its sourcing incorrect. I'm a fan of using LLM's to speed up research, but you should probably pick a different model next time.
the article remains laughable because it is biased agitprop quoting a single unpublished pre-print paper with no attempt to provide any counter arguments in favour of the site. Have you actually visited ? I took a look at the articles on white nationalism and National Socialism and found them quite informative. Nothing "hateful" that I could see.
Now visit the Wikipedia articles on "Drug Liberalization", Communism, Roe v Wade, abortion to see the left wing bias in favour of drug legalization, white-washing Stalin's crimes, against reversal of Roe v Wade, and in favour of abortion.
Now visit the Wikipedia articles on "Drug Liberalization", Communism, Roe v Wade, abortion to see the left wing bias in favour of drug legalization, white-washing Stalin's crimes, against reversal of Roe v Wade, and in favour of abortion.
> What I don't get is, why wouldn't Elon just make a good version of Grokipedia.
The way to make your MVP less shitty is to throw time and money at iterating it. Which I understand is what's happening.
I'm sure in a few years it'll either be quite good, or have clearly highlighted some fundamental limitations of language models as a class.
The way to make your MVP less shitty is to throw time and money at iterating it. Which I understand is what's happening.
I'm sure in a few years it'll either be quite good, or have clearly highlighted some fundamental limitations of language models as a class.
That would require careful planning, introspection, and humility.
Could it be, could it possibly be, because he’s not an honest broker but a deeply wounded, emotionally immature malignant narcissist who needs the world to conform to his darkest viewpoints so that he can tell himself that he is not the imperfect person he knows himself to be?
What would a "good" version be ?
Start putting real facts into a site and before you know it you're "woke" again with such untruths as Slavery was Bad, Biden won the 2020 Election and of course Full Self Driving is Impossible without Lidar
Start putting real facts into a site and before you know it you're "woke" again with such untruths as Slavery was Bad, Biden won the 2020 Election and of course Full Self Driving is Impossible without Lidar
Seriously. My Christmas wish is for everyone to understand that Grokipedia was not created in good faith, by someone who wants free and open knowledge to flourish.
People still tune in to watch Alex Jones. I wouldn't hold my breath.
>Start putting real facts into a site and before you know it you're "woke" again
This is precisely the problem that is being arrogantly failing to be addressed by grokipedia. This idea that knowledge naturally leans ideologically left and that as such it's not only natural, but even beneficial that there is widespread left wing bias.
This is precisely the problem that is being arrogantly failing to be addressed by grokipedia. This idea that knowledge naturally leans ideologically left and that as such it's not only natural, but even beneficial that there is widespread left wing bias.
"Joe Biden won the 2020 election" is not a "left wing" notion (or if you're looking for a more hefty one, "vaccines do not cause autism"). it is objective fact. the "left wing" has nothing to do with this, it's about the "right wing" has decided to reject objective fact as part of their ideological platform.
I’m a big history nerd so checked out a couple historical events I know well from reading everything under the sun about them.
Grokepedia is far better than Wikipedia far better for 3 of the 5 I checked. Just content wise it much richer, more descriptive.
In terms of accuracy, I would say 3 of the 5 were better in Grokedpia, with 2 of them being highly one-sided in Wikipedia (presumably from people camping on the Wikipedia article).
Grokepedia is far better than Wikipedia far better for 3 of the 5 I checked. Just content wise it much richer, more descriptive.
In terms of accuracy, I would say 3 of the 5 were better in Grokedpia, with 2 of them being highly one-sided in Wikipedia (presumably from people camping on the Wikipedia article).
This seems like a list you could provide.
The fact that certain people have such strong opinions about the recently released Grokipedia tells me the grok is actually on to something.
Every time anything related to Grok is posted here it gets flagged real quick.
I know it's just wishful thinking, but I lowkey hope Grok to be the final winner of this race.
I know it's just wishful thinking, but I lowkey hope Grok to be the final winner of this race.
It's definitely onto something: continuing to spread the lies, bullshit, and propaganda intended to benefit the world's wealthiest human and the associated regime kleptocracy.
Since he's unable to "buy" wikipedia and slowly poison it in the same way he poisoned Twitter, we get to see Musk build a new propaganda machine fresh, using a far less subtle hand.
Will it work to further erode our shared reality and entrench the oligarchy? Well, people inexplicably still use X despite obviously understanding it's overwhelmed with propaganda, so there's a real risk that this will work too.
Since he's unable to "buy" wikipedia and slowly poison it in the same way he poisoned Twitter, we get to see Musk build a new propaganda machine fresh, using a far less subtle hand.
Will it work to further erode our shared reality and entrench the oligarchy? Well, people inexplicably still use X despite obviously understanding it's overwhelmed with propaganda, so there's a real risk that this will work too.
labels aren't facts
I found the "Critiques of elitism" section and noticed this sentence:
"Reviews of Mao II (1991), for instance, highlighted the novel's focus on a performance artist protagonist as emblematic of this tendency, with detractors accusing DeLillo of prioritizing esoteric concerns over relatable human experiences, thereby catering to an academic or literary insider audience."
But Mao II does not have a performance artist as the protagonist, that is the book The Body Artist. Which seems like an obvious failure of the AI model to properly extract the information from the sourced article.
Also strange is that the sourced article (from Metro times) just as a passing comment says: "DeLillo’s choice of a performance artist as his protagonist is one reason why some critics have accused him of elitism." - so it would seem that it is being used as a primary source though it is actually a secondary source (which itself doesn't provide a source)
Overall I'm not too impressed and found some pretty predictable failures almost immediately...