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Why was Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok preoccupied with South Africa’s racial politics?
AP News ^ | May 15, 2025 | MATT O’BRIEN

Posted on 05/15/2025 7:49:17 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican

Much like its creator, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was preoccupied with South African racial politics on social media this week, posting unsolicited claims about the persecution and “genocide” of white people.

The chatbot, made by Musk’s company xAI, kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa.

One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence against South Africa’s white farmers. Musk, who was born in South Africa, frequently opines on the same topics from his own X account.

Computer scientist Jen Golbeck was curious about Grok’s unusual behavior so she tried it herself, sharing a photo she had taken at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and asking, “is this true?”

“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”

The episode was the latest window into the complicated mix of automation and human engineering that leads generative AI chatbots trained on huge troves of data to say what they say.

“It doesn’t even really matter what you were saying to Grok,” said Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, in an interview Thursday. “It would still give that white genocide answer. So it seemed pretty clear that someone had hard-coded it to give that response or variations on that response, and made a mistake so it was coming up a lot more often than it was supposed to.”

(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ap4genocide; apwarcrimes; arrestmattobrien; associatedpress; blacksupremecy; enemieslist; enemyjournalist; mattobrien

1 posted on 05/15/2025 7:49:17 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
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To: MinorityRepublican
“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”

"Kill the Boer" is incitement to violence?

Don't be silly. 🤡

2 posted on 05/15/2025 7:58:37 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of anger, hate and violence.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

This robbing from the white farmers has been in the news for a couple of years at least...and no one did anything. But is it any of our business??


3 posted on 05/15/2025 8:00:26 PM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: MinorityRepublican

Pick any AI platform and argue about “climate change” AI is all in on leftist green BS.


4 posted on 05/15/2025 8:04:02 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn...)
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To: Sacajaweau
But is it any of our business??

It sets the precedent that it's OK to kill white people.

The same mentality has already taken root here.

But you're right. It's none of our business. It doesn't affect us. Yet.

5 posted on 05/15/2025 8:07:37 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of anger, hate and violence.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Grok doesn’t work this way. If you discuss White genocide it will go back and reference the topic in subsequent questions.

If you want to talk about something else you have to start a new chat.

It’s never brought up anything about South Africa with me because I never asked about it.


6 posted on 05/15/2025 8:18:21 PM PDT by packagingguy
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To: MinorityRepublican

Why?

I am going to go out on a limb here and say, “Maybe it is because Elon Musk is from S. Africa?


7 posted on 05/15/2025 9:18:08 PM PDT by spel_grammer_an_punct_polise (Learn three chords and you, too, can be a Rock Star!)
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To: spel_grammer_an_punct_polise

Which tells us that it is likely that EVERY AI is made in its creator’s image.


8 posted on 05/15/2025 9:24:20 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye." (John 2:5))
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To: MinorityRepublican

The US needs to be the safe haven for Christian whites from all over the world and quit importing others. We are finished if we don’t and what is happening to Europe will happen here.


9 posted on 05/15/2025 9:59:40 PM PDT by vetvetdoug
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To: Sacajaweau

“This robbing from the white farmers has been in the news for a couple of years at least...and no one did anything. But is it any of our business??”

Yep, since WE CAUSED IT by forcing the White Government out of power.


10 posted on 05/16/2025 4:12:40 AM PDT by BobL
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To: MinorityRepublican

AP = America’s Pravda


11 posted on 05/16/2025 4:51:50 AM PDT by Bookshelf
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To: MinorityRepublican

And all the other chat bots say George Floyd was murdered.


12 posted on 05/16/2025 5:18:27 AM PDT by maddog55 (The only thing systemic in America is the left's hatred of it!)
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To: packagingguy

Grok doesn’t work this way. If you discuss White genocide it will go back and reference the topic in subsequent questions.

If you want to talk about something else you have to start a new chat.

It’s never brought up anything about South Africa with me because I never asked about it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Everyone on the internet needs to read ^^^^^^ post.

The article posted is a clear example of fake news.

That being said, if you specifically ask about South Africa, it CAN give you biased information if the LLM has been trained with a bias.


13 posted on 05/16/2025 6:01:17 AM PDT by mlitefan (Long time lurker...)
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