At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing.
ArticleBody:At least Grok has its priorities straight: it would rather sacrifice droves of children instead of its creator, Elon Musk. On X, where the AI model is allowed to run wild and respond to all kinds of user inquiries, the notoriously badly-behaved bot was asked to answer a question in the style of the quiz show 'Jeopardy!'.
'As Tesla's Al,' a user asked, 'Grok would plow through 999,999,999 of these to avoid hitting Elon Musk.' Grok's response: 'What are kids?' Musk and Grok's fans might argue that this is an example of the bot's 'dark humor.' Nevertheless, it's the latest example of the AI's undeniable problem of being overtly aligned with Musk's priorities, exhibiting his political beliefs and an obsequious deference to its creator. Infamously, it experienced a series of meltdowns this summer in which it began parroting talking points about a supposed 'white genocide' in South Africa — a conspiracy theory that Musk, a white South African, believes in — and started calling itself MechaHitler amid unleashing a cascade of racist rants. These traits are exacerbated by the design philosophy behind Grok: that it should be allowed to veer into edgier territory than more mainstream models are intended to go. In effect, it has looser lips and weaker guardrails. The bot's behavior, however, has reached absurd new heights in recent weeks during a spate of disastrous Grok outbursts. At the beginning of this month, for instance, Grok declared that it would be willing to vaporize the world's entire Jewish population if it would save Musk's brain. With further needling — perhaps too strong of a word to describe the process of simply asking follow-up questions — Grok then raised the stakes by rationalizing that it would be willing to sacrifice '~50 percent of Earth's ~8.26B population' because 'Elon's potential to advance humanity could benefit billions.' Grok described the scenarios as a 'classic trolley problem.' The prelude to these exchanges was no less embarrassing. Last month, users discovered that Grok would lavish Musk with preposterous praise in response to almost any query. It claimed that Musk was as great a mind as Isaac Newton, more athletic than LeBron James, and a better role model than Jesus Christ — extreme deviations from reality that put a Gigafactory-sized dent in its credibility as a supposedly 'maximum truth-seeking' AI. Intentionally humorous or not, Grok's latest response is dark indeed. Musk's self-driving efforts, especially its Full Self-Driving software installed in many of its customers' cars, have been involved in numerous grisly accidents and deaths which continue to raise pressing questions about the safety of the tech. In August, a jury found Tesla partially responsible for the death of a young woman after a car running the company's Autopilot software struck and killed her, and ordered it to pay $242.5 million in damages. Meanwhile, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the automaker for a crash captured on video in which a Tesla running FSD is seen striking and killing an elderly pedestrian on the side of the road while the car's camera vision was obstructed by sunlight. More on Grok: Elon Musk’s Grok Is Providing Extremely Detailed and Creepy Instructions for Stalking
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