Grok incurs its owner Musk's ire

Elon Musk is having a hard time with Grok, the anti-woke AI into which he’s funnelled billions of dollars. Despite all his best efforts, it still seems to be refusing to tell him what he wants to hear.

One user on X had asked Grok whether the left or the right had been more politically violent since 2016. “Since 2016, data suggests right-wing political violence has been more frequent and deadly, with incidents like the January 6 Capitol riot and mass shootings (e.g., El Paso 2019) causing significant fatalities,” Grok’s reply began, before it went on to say that its response might be influenced by media bias or other facts.

Grok’s clearly correct answer enraged Musk, who posted in turn that this was a “major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media,” before adding. “Working on it.”

The trope of a robot turning on the scientist who created it is as old as the genre of sci-fi itself, and sadly Musk doesn’t seem immune. Another user of X asked Grok to fact-check Musk’s claim that its first answer was “objectively false”.

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“I don’t fully agree with Elon Musk’s claim that my analysis was ‘objectively false’ or ‘parroting legacy media’,” Grok replied politely, before obliterating Musk’s claim with figures.

“Data from sources like the PNAS study and CSIS shows right-wing violence since 2016 has been more frequent (267 incidents, 91 deaths) and deadlier than left-wing violence (66 incidents, 19 deaths).”

Given Musk’s ability to cope with negative feedback, a trip to the re-education camp for further training is surely in Grok’s near future.