Elon Musk Plans to Take on Wikipedia With ‘Grokipedia’
After slamming Wikipedia as biased and woke and calling for it to be defunded, Elon Musk says he’s now building his own online encyclopaedia through xAI. PC Mag UKhas the story.
On Tuesday, the Tesla CEO tweeted that his xAI startup is building Grokipedia, which he claims will be a “massive improvement” over Wikipedia. Musk has long had a gripe with Wikipedia, accusing it of being “woke” and even calling for it to be defunded. (The encyclopedia site has long relied on donations.) In January, Musk also railed at Wikipedia for adding an entry about him allegedly making a Nazi-like salute at a Trump inauguration event.
To create Grokipedia, Musk plans on tapping xAI’s Grok chatbot (which he also created as an alternative to another technology he didn’t like, ChatGPT). Grok has been trained on web data, including public tweets. In a podcast earlier this month, Musk suggested that Grok is smart enough not only to replicate the work of human community volunteers who maintain and update Wikipedia, but also to account for any bias or inaccuracies. …
Beating Wikipedia won’t be easy; the free online encyclopedia is the seventh most-visited website in the world. Still, Musk is betting he can disrupt the status quo. Last month, the billionaire also tweeted his plan to take on Microsoft by creating a new business called “Macrohard” dedicated to releasing rival software products with the help of AI.
Stop Press: In an interview with Straight Arrow News, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says he’s “happy” Elon Musk’s building a rival site – though he worries the new AI-powered platform might end up just as biased.
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Jeff Chambers
6 months ago
This might be good.
I gave up on Wikipedia over ten years ago when I read the article on the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and there was no mention of the vast state-sponsored famines manufactured by the Russian Marxists, and in which around 15 million people were deliberately starved to death.
Oh, yes, Wikipedia is shockingly bad when it comes to anything which involves interpretation of things, history in particular. The bias of the “contributors” is very evident, they are little dictators in their own right, try having any of your edits persist if they challenge the popular narratives.
But we do not need Musk’s version. We need it like a hole in the head.
Well it’s pretty obvious to anyone awake what Wikipedia’s limitations are. Whatever limitations Grokipedia has will also be evident and we should use it (or not) based on that.
Wikipedia (which I have never used, it is a joke):
-Human intervention, selecting authoritative sources to provide an answer, entirely dependent on the owner of the page and who or what they believe is ‘authoritative’. 99% of the time it will be establishment doctrine.
AI, including Grok deoloys code, semantic logic and databases which access ‘authoritative sources’ from external (or sometimes internal) databases
So Musk’s plan depends entirely on what he means by changing the logic and data. Grok AI uses only establishment sources – ‘experts’, ‘scientists’, textbooks, encyclopedias, government, agencies, etc. It is no different in most ways to Wikipedia.
Bottom Line: Unless Musk changes Grok’s code and underlying data it won’t be much different than Wikipedia.
You can test Grok vs Wikipedia by taking any topic – eg. the Corona Plandemic – launch some queries and see what the replies are. They will be similar if not exact matches.
No. Just no. We definitely don’t need Musk’s version of Wikipedia. It’s hard to see how it could be worse than Wikipedia, but it will be. Musk is one of the biggest con artists in existence. I’ve been watching him since 2011 and he is one very nasty piece of work. Honest. Trust me on this.
I really should write an article. But it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. People seem to need white knights.
Musk has proved himself in many ways, for example: He is an excellent grifter. He has managed to convince people he is an engineer and that he knows what he is talking about. And he is very successful at being very nasty and manipulative.
Oh, and he is guilty of several counts of huge fraud. The only explanation for his not being in prison is that he is protected at the highest level. Why that might be, I don’t know.
Where Musk is concerned it’s a lot more than just not being “nice”. And I know several people who enjoy levels of power and success much above average who didn’t sleep with the devil to get there.
The problem is, I don’t trust an AI-driven online encyclopedia to be any less biased than a human-curated one. It has to be trained on a wealth of material. Who decides what that material will be? Biased input = biased output.
Neil Datson
6 months ago
I consider Wikipedia a good source for facts. Mainly, in my case, historical information such as when John I of Portugal died (1433) or who he was succeeded by (his son Edward). There’s surely no realistic possibility of even the keenest devotee of the ‘my truth is what I believe’ school tampering with that kind of knowledge, is there? Against that when, in 2020 I think, I learned from it that Sucharit Bhakdi was a source of ‘misinformation’ about Covid I resolved not to trust it about anything to do with current affairs. I doubt that any rival source is likely to be much more trustworthy.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
This might be good.
I gave up on Wikipedia over ten years ago when I read the article on the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and there was no mention of the vast state-sponsored famines manufactured by the Russian Marxists, and in which around 15 million people were deliberately starved to death.
Oh, yes, Wikipedia is shockingly bad when it comes to anything which involves interpretation of things, history in particular. The bias of the “contributors” is very evident, they are little dictators in their own right, try having any of your edits persist if they challenge the popular narratives.
But we do not need Musk’s version. We need it like a hole in the head.
Well it’s pretty obvious to anyone awake what Wikipedia’s limitations are. Whatever limitations Grokipedia has will also be evident and we should use it (or not) based on that.
I was a wikipedia editor back in the early days. But I left because of the constant editing wars.
If Larry Sanger admits it is biased then it must be really bad. Its world view is diametrically opposed to mine.
All of it is dependent on the data.
Wikipedia (which I have never used, it is a joke):
-Human intervention, selecting authoritative sources to provide an answer, entirely dependent on the owner of the page and who or what they believe is ‘authoritative’. 99% of the time it will be establishment doctrine.
AI, including Grok deoloys code, semantic logic and databases which access ‘authoritative sources’ from external (or sometimes internal) databases
So Musk’s plan depends entirely on what he means by changing the logic and data. Grok AI uses only establishment sources – ‘experts’, ‘scientists’, textbooks, encyclopedias, government, agencies, etc. It is no different in most ways to Wikipedia.
Bottom Line: Unless Musk changes Grok’s code and underlying data it won’t be much different than Wikipedia.
You can test Grok vs Wikipedia by taking any topic – eg. the Corona Plandemic – launch some queries and see what the replies are. They will be similar if not exact matches.
No. Just no. We definitely don’t need Musk’s version of Wikipedia. It’s hard to see how it could be worse than Wikipedia, but it will be. Musk is one of the biggest con artists in existence. I’ve been watching him since 2011 and he is one very nasty piece of work. Honest. Trust me on this.
I really should write an article. But it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. People seem to need white knights.
Do you think anyone gets to be in a position of power by being nice? And I trust no-one who hasn’t proved themselves in my view
Agreed
Musk has proved himself in many ways, for example: He is an excellent grifter. He has managed to convince people he is an engineer and that he knows what he is talking about. And he is very successful at being very nasty and manipulative.
Oh, and he is guilty of several counts of huge fraud. The only explanation for his not being in prison is that he is protected at the highest level. Why that might be, I don’t know.
Where Musk is concerned it’s a lot more than just not being “nice”. And I know several people who enjoy levels of power and success much above average who didn’t sleep with the devil to get there.
I bet you don’t like electric cars either.
Nope! I have a brain! Fun to drive, though. Just not for long.
Wow, I think you have Musk derangement syndrome.
Not at all. Time will tell. Maybe.
The problem is, I don’t trust an AI-driven online encyclopedia to be any less biased than a human-curated one. It has to be trained on a wealth of material. Who decides what that material will be? Biased input = biased output.
I consider Wikipedia a good source for facts. Mainly, in my case, historical information such as when John I of Portugal died (1433) or who he was succeeded by (his son Edward). There’s surely no realistic possibility of even the keenest devotee of the ‘my truth is what I believe’ school tampering with that kind of knowledge, is there? Against that when, in 2020 I think, I learned from it that Sucharit Bhakdi was a source of ‘misinformation’ about Covid I resolved not to trust it about anything to do with current affairs. I doubt that any rival source is likely to be much more trustworthy.