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Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.” (theintercept.com)

submitted 3 hours ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

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In late October, Elon Musk released a Wikipedia alternative, with pages written by his AI chatbot Grok. Unlike its nearly quarter-century-old namesake, Musk said Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia, which he previously described as an “extension of legacy media propaganda.” But while Musk’s Grokipedia, in his eyes, is propaganda-free, it seems to have a proclivity toward right-wing hagiography.

Take Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler. Until earlier this month, the entry read, “Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945.” That phrase has been edited to “Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and dictator,” but Grok still refers to Hitler by his honorific one clause later, writing that Hitler served as “Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934 until his suicide in 1945.” NBC News also pointed out that the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 19 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (6 children)

Conservapedia already did this something like twenty years ago. It missed the entire purpose of the project, which was to invite a kaleidoscope of specialists and journalists to document the volume of known information categorically, primarily through citation to other online works.

Instead, you had a basket case of ultra-orthodox ideologues carving out a very niche set of contrary opinion posts that weren't well documented or continuously maintained.

Conservapedia isn't a right wing vanity project because of it's hot takes on Hitler, it's a vanity project because of the yawning gulfs in it's data set. Nobody engages with the site, because it is so heavily censored.

I get the sense Grokapedia will suffer the same fate. If a subject doesn't tickle Musk's interest, it'll either go undocumented or be a naked plagarization of some other online encyclopedia. And as soon as Musk loses interest entirely, support for the service will go the same way as so many private vanity projects.

Incidentally, Wikipedia's fate is also an open question. What happens when Jimmy Wales can't administer and fundraise for it anymore? How long until some hacks get their hooks in and corrupt it like so many other private media outlets?

[–] tpihkal@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Queue the return of the door to door Encyclopedia salesman. Soon everyone will have a World Book Encyclopedia set in their home again!

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

I still have my dad's 1957 edition sitting on my childhood bedroom shelf.

It is genuinely kind of wild to read through that thing, in light of modern history.

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