Grokipedia

[arthwollipot]

For those who don't know, Grokipedia (no, I'm not going to bother to link to it) is Elon Musks "replacement" for Wikipedia. It is supposed to be an AI-generated encyclopedia of the internet.

Unfortunately, as we all know, AI cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. Grokipedia contains many factual errors and right-wing talking points, which is appropriate because so does Grok, the LLM that it's built over. Here's what academics have found when closely examining the information on Grokipedia:

In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia

From publishing falsehoods to pushing far-right ideology, Grokipedia gives chatroom comments equal status to research

www.theguardian.com

(Sir Richard) Evans, however, was discovering that Musk’s use of AI to weigh and check facts was suffering a more earth-bound problem. “Chatroom contributions are given equal status with serious academic work,” Evans, an expert on the Third Reich, told the Guardian, after being invited to test out Grokipedia. “AI just hoovers up everything.”

Andrew Dudfield, the head of AI at Full Fact, a UK-based factchecking organisation, said: “We really have to consider whether an AI-generated encyclopedia – a facsimile of reality, run through a filter – is a better proposition than any of the previous things that we have. It doesn’t display the same transparency but it is asking for the same trust. It is not clear how far the human hand is involved, how far it is AI=generated and what content the AI was trained on. It is hard to place trust in something when you can’t see how those choices are made.”

...many of the 885,279 articles available on Grokipedia in its first week were lifted almost word for word from Wikipedia, including its entries on the PlayStation 5, the Ford Focus and Led Zeppelin. Others, however, differed significantly:

• Grokipedia’s entry on the Russian invasion of Ukraine cited the Kremlin as a prominent source and quoted the official Russian terminology about “denazifying” Ukraine, protecting ethnic Russians and neutralising threats to Russian security. By contrast, Wikipedia said Putin espoused imperialist views and “baselessly claimed that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis”.
• Grokipedia called the far-right organisation Britain First a “patriotic political party”, which pleased its leader, Paul Golding, who in 2018 was jailed for anti-Muslim hate crimes. Wikipedia, on the other hand, called it “neo-fascist” and a “hate group”.
• Grokipedia called the 6 January 2021 turmoil at the US Capitol in Washington DC a “riot”, not an attempted coup, and said there were “empirical underpinnings” to the idea that a deliberate demographic erasure of white people in western nations is being orchestrated through mass immigration. This is a notion that critics consider to be a conspiracy theory.
• Grokipedia said Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case was handed down “after a trial in a heavily Democratic jurisdiction”, and there was no mention of his conflicts of interest – for example receiving a jet from Qatar or the Trump family cryptocurrency businesses.

Wikipedia cites its sources and edits are discussed and considered transparently amongst its human editors. A change to a Wikipedia page is quickly reverted if it is not supported by evidence. Grokipedia should not be considered a reliable source for factual or objective information, any more than any LLM chatbot should.

 

[Norman Alexander]

It's a ◊◊◊◊-pile aggregator.

 

[Wudang]

It's a ◊◊◊◊-pile aggregator.

Yep and so the content might be assumed to be at the level of the average internet poster. Which is not great.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If I want to know the worthless opinion of some bloke down the pub on any topic I can go to the pub. At least that way I'll get a beer while I'm being lied to.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Why bother with any input at all? Just make it up by stringing random "talking points" together.

Gresham's Law will eventually reduce the whole search environment to a pile of ◊◊◊◊.

 

[JayUtah]

Wikipedia cites its sources and edits are discussed and considered transparently amongst its human editors. A change to a Wikipedia page is quickly reverted if it is not supported by evidence.

I've had edits on Wikipedia debated and reverted on topics where I'm one of the few actual experts. Why? Because the meat of edit was never before published. There's nothing about publishing that automatically conveys authority and trust. But it allows someone else to verify the scholarship. While some people are quite willing to take something on authority "Because Jay said so," it's better to say, "Jay wrote it down here, published it, and this is what was said about it by others." Wikipedia is properly not an avenue for original publication.

Conversely, Wikipedia cites me as a source on some other topics because I previously published on them. Therefore there is a body of context that lets a Wikipedia editor (or any other party) express an opinion on the authority of the source and the strength of the claim based on something other than my representation. My favorite part was when I was trying to double-check some research and followed a bunch of links to discover I was the source.

Grokipedia should not be considered a reliable source for factual or objective information, any more than any LLM chatbot should.

No. I donned some sufficient digital PPE and did a few searches on problematic subjects. → Thoroughly laughable. It's a fairly ham-fisted attempt to give right-wing nonsense a pseudo-academic paint job.

 

[catsmate]

Cam did an analysis, based on one aspect of sci-fi history. Slopopedia is terrible.

Slopopedia is a slow-o-pedia

Famously, the “wiki” part in the name “wikipedia” came from a Hawaiian term for “quick”, with roots in a 1995 user-editable website called WikiWikiWeb. While Wik…

camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com

Yet another terrible encyclopedia

The basic problem Vox Day’s vanity version of Wikipedia had was a lack of an editing community. It still exists but amounts to a couple of people, one of whom copies articles from Wikipedia. …

camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

It's the new Trusworthy encyclopaedia.

 

[Mongrel]

It's the new Trusworthy encyclopaedia.

Not until they decide to rewrite the Bible to remove it's woke attitude

 

[Trebuchet]

It's the new Trusworthy encyclopaedia.

Not until they decide to rewrite the Bible to remove it's woke attitude

I'd like to see what Rational Wiki says about it but it's been down for a couple of days.

 

[JayUtah]

In principio erat Verbum. Et Verbum erat apud Deum. Et Trumpus ambos ipsos dimisit et hamberderem comedit. Amen.

 

[Trebuchet]

In today's learning experience, I have discovered you can highlight a foreign language selection, right click and select "translate to English". Thanks, Jay.

 

[JayUtah]

In today's learning experience, I have discovered you can highlight a foreign language selection, right click and select "translate to English". Thanks, Jay.

I'm interested in how it translated hamberderem, since it's not a Latin word and not even based on a correct English word. And I just up and decided "hamberder" would be a third-declension noun.

 

[Trebuchet]

"Hamburger"

 

[Mongrel]

I'd like to see what Rational Wiki says about it but it's been down for a couple of days.

That would have been my first choice as well, but yeah it's been flaky for a week or so now.