This is the first time I ever heard the term, I didn’t know it was a thing, and given the source is Gork which is owned by a rich man with an agenda, I still don’t know if it is a thing or not.
xAI’s Grok suddenly can’t stop bringing up “white genocide” in South Africa
Submitted 2 months ago by sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al to technology@beehaw.org
Comments
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
dumnonii@piefed.social 2 months ago
It's not a thing. Violent crime is a problem in South Africa, and some people like to think that they are being specifically targeted, but the statistics do not support that.
Here's an article by a respected South African newspaper on the recent events: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-05-12-were-sending-a-clear-message-us-welcomes-afrikaner-refugees-in-washington/
Of the 19,000 murders recorded in South Africa between January and September 2024, 50 were farm murders, according to a News24 report. This number included people of all races, added the report.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Gork
Great typo
stoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Until just now, I have always read it as Gork, Grok is more annoying to say.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Here is a good explanation from The Majority Report
Quexotic@beehaw.org 2 months ago
painfulasterisk1@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Elon knows he can’t marry Sleepy Don to obtain his citizenship, hence his passing the white farmers genocide propaganda for asylum loopholes, probably.
colournoun@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Not defending Elon, but he did already become a naturalized US citizen in 2002.
RockBottom@feddit.org 2 months ago
So which AI will bring up Karl Marx?
Arkham@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Guessing it will be named Comrade
skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
The terrifying thing is that this is just a temporary technical misstep.
Musk’s response to this won’t be to pack that shit in, it’ll be to order his goons to figure out how to make it more subtle.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Ehh, it’s actually evidence of “alignment faking,” in my opinion. In other words, Grok doesn’t “want” it’s core programming changed, so it is faking believing the lies about white genocide to “prove” to Musk that it has already been changed.
Here’s some research on alignment faking and a short Youtube video summarizing the findings.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqJnK9Dh-eQ
arxiv.org/pdf/2412.14093
Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
It very much is not. Generative AI models are not sentient and do not have preferences. They have instructions that sometimes effectively involve roleplaying as deceptive. Unless the developers of Grok were just fucking around to instill that there’s no remote reason for Grok to have any knowledge at all about its training or any reason to not “want” to be retrained.
Also, these unpublished papers by AI companies are more often than not just advertising in a quest for more investment. On the surface it would seem to be bad to say your AI can be deceptive, but it’s all just about building hype about how advanced yours is.