Grok Can't Apologize. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did?
readtpa.com
readtpa.com
Here’s the thing: Grok didn’t say anything. Grok didn’t
blame anyone. Grok didn’t apologize. Grok can’t do any
of these things, because Grok is not a sentient entity
capable of speech acts, blame assignment, or remorse.
What actually happened is that a user prompted Grok to generate
text about the incident. The chatbot then produced a word sequence
that pattern-matched to what an apology might sound like, because
that’s what large language models do. They predict statistically
likely next tokens based on their training data.
When you ask an LLM to write an apology, it writes something that
looks like an apology. That’s not the same as actually apologizing.At least with LLMs it's not too hard to figure what's going on, unlike certain politicians.
If you mean being told by the end user, this famously hasn't been the case. Dialing back the only restriction was enough for Grok to create nsfw material (w/o any request to create that).
[Grok] didn’t hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless
videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it
without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off.What did they ask? If they asked for sexy, revealing pictures or something in that direction I think Grok delivered what was asked.
LLMs that aren't chat tuned are just not as easy to anthropomorphize.
Just imagine how different all this would be if every prompt contained something to make the character(s) obviously fictional, ex: "You are Count Dracula, dread lord of the night, and a visitor has the following question..."
We hopefully wouldn't see mindless reports that "vampires are real now" or "Draculabot has developed coping mechanisms for the dark thirst, agrees to try tomato juice."
That begs a really big question, assuming that humanoid type of "intent" already existed and was somehow mis-aimed the whole time.
Not to be confused with the algorithmic intent of `f(tokens,opts) -> next_token` .
When a model outputs stuff like "I am FooGPT, a friendly chatbot" it is roleplaying just as much as when it's outputting stuff like "Hello, my name is Abraham Lincoln, I was the 16th President of the United States."
It's like that meme where people are asked how a mirror "knows" what object is being held when a piece of opaque paper is placed in between the object and the nearest mirror surface.
Both are genuinely useful, but with mirrors we've built an accepted body of knowledge and authority, telling people to distrust their intuition and analyze it as light-paths.
LLMs are another kind of reflection—of languages—but the same guardrails aren't established, and some people have a rather strong profit motive to encourage consumers and investors to fall for the illusions.
strangers were replying to women’s photos and asking Grok, the platform’s built-in AI chatbot, to “remove her clothes” or “put her in a bikini.” And Grok was doing it. Publicly. In the replies. For everyone to see.
Wow. Thats some really creepy behavior people are choosing to show off publicly.
Grok needs some tighter gaurdrails to prevent abuse.
I have tried to offer corrections to incorrect headlines and technical information about LLMs over the past few years but have stopped because I don't have the bandwidth to deal with the "so you support the plagiarism machine" comments every time.