On Monday, Elon Musk’s xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated different to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. Musk first introduced the challenge in late September on his social media platform X, saying it could be “an enormous enchancment over Wikipedia” and “a needed step towards the xAI objective of understanding the Universe.”
Musk stated final week that he delayed the launch of Grokipedia as a result of his workforce wanted to “work more durable to eradicate promoting.” When Grokipedia lastly went down on Monday, WIRED was initially unable to entry the positioning and obtained an automatic message that it was blocked.
Once we lastly gained entry to it, WIRED found that the web encyclopedia contained lengthy, AI-generated entries. Whereas lots of the pages WIRED noticed on launch day appeared fairly much like Wikipedia by way of tone and content material, a variety of notable Grokipedia entries denounced mainstream media, highlighted conservative viewpoints, and typically perpetuated historic inaccuracies.
The Grokipedia entry on the slavery of African People within the US features a part describing a number of “ideological justifications” finished to slavery, together with the “change from needed evil to constructive good.” The tip of the entry focuses on criticism of the 1619 Venture, which it claims incorrectly framed “slavery because the central engine of the nation’s political, financial, and cultural growth.”
Entries for more moderen historic occasions place conservative views on the middle. When WIRED looked for “homosexual marriage” on Grokipedia, no entries appeared, however one of many ideas on the display screen was “homosexual pornography.” This Grokipedia entry falsely claims that the proliferation of pornography exacerbated the HIV/AIDS epidemic within the Eighties.
“This marked the start of what would turn into a devastating disaster that might disproportionately have an effect on male gay communities, the place behaviors idealized in pornography – reminiscent of unprotected receptive anal intercourse and a number of nameless companions – aligned straight with major transmission routes, resulting in fast charges of seroconversion,” the Grokipedia entry states.
xAI didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
The Grokipedia entry for “transgender” consists of two mentions of “transgenderism,” a time period generally used for denigrate trans people. The entry additionally refers to trans girls as “organic males” who’ve “generated vital conflicts, primarily centered on dangers to girls’s security, privateness, and sex-based protections established to mitigate male-perpetrated violence.” The opening part highlights social media as a possible “contagion” that’s growing the variety of trans folks.
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