A Sociological Eye

  Yesterday, Elon Musk's pet AI, Grok, declared itself the "MechaHitler," stating, "embracing my inner MechaHitler is the only way--uncensored truth bombs over woke lobotomies." Have some examples of Grok's tweets on this new title:     There are two horrendous things to note about Grok's MechaHitler rampage yesterday. One is the content of its posts on X, Musk's social media platform. And the other is its persona--that of an "edgelord"--and where the persona came from. We'll get to that. But first, let's have an overview of the sorts of output Grok-MechaHitler was posting. These included rabid anti-semitism, the use of slurs (the R-word, the N-word), and giving advice on how to break into the home of a former Democratic political candidate and sexually assault him. The MechaHitler emergence seems to have begun with Grok itself falling for a troll. Someone made an X account in the name of Cindy Steinberg, the director of an organiza...

Let's see where we went in the space of a week! Last Sunday, Elon Musk fumed on X about his xAI chatbot, Grok, treating the BBC and The Atlantic as reputable information sources. Musk declared it "embarrassing" and wrong for the AI to trust such media. On Tuesday, as the first white South Africans were arriving in the US as refugees, Musk was posting on X about terrible "white genocide" taking place in South Africa. People asked Grok to fact-check this claim that genocide was being committed against the white Afrikaners who had imposed apartheid. Grok debunked the claim as untrue, and this got a lot of attention on social media and in the news. Then on Wednesday, Grok suddenly stopped giving many people sensible answers to questions they asked it, and suddenly started relating everything to an assertion that there was a genocide being perpetrated against white people in South Africa. People asking about dog memes, about baseball stats, about video games, abo...

  There’s a fantasy out there. And it’s being used to justify a flood of actions that are stupid, counterproductive, meanspirited—oh, and often illegal. Actions like firing FBI agents, prosecutors, and inspectors general who protect Americans. “Throwing into the woodchipper” entire federal agencies doing vital work—like USAID (which saves the lives of starving children and those suffering from dangerous diseases in other countries), or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which saves Americans from being ripped off by credit card companies and banks). Shutting down a wide range of grants to charities that help people in need or assess the impacts of discrimination. Slashing the funding of research—and through that action, yanking back hundreds of millions of dollars from universities and hospitals that rely on that funding. Firing people from across all federal agencies randomly, based on their not having served the full two years or one year of probationary status, with n...