Hacker News Reader

Comment by kouteiheika | Hacker News Reader

This is really amusing to watch, because everything that Grok is accused of is something which you can also trigger in currently available open-weight models (if you know what you're doing).

There's nothing special about Grok in this regard. It wasn't trained to be a MechaHitler, nor to generate CSAM. It's just relatively uncensored[1] compared to the competition, which means it can be easily manipulated to do what the users tell it to, and that is biting Musk in the ass here.

And just to be clear, since apparently people love to jump to conclusions - I'm not excusing what is happening. I'm just pointing out the fact that the only special thing about Grok is that it's both relatively uncensored and easily available to a mainstream audience.

[1] -- see the Uncensored General Intelligence leaderboard where Grok is currently #1: https://huggingface.co/spaces/DontPlanToEnd/UGI-Leaderboard

View on HN

> everything that Grok is accused of is something which you can also trigger in currently available open-weight models (if you know what you're doing)

Well, yes. You can make child pornography with any video-editing software. How is this exoneration?

We don't go after Adobe for doing that. We go after the person who did it.

Well you could not sue the video-editing software for someone making child pornography with it. You would, quite sanely, go after the pedophiles themselves.

I'm not talking about video editing software; that's a different class of software. I'm talking about other generative AI models, which you can download today onto your computer, and have it do the same thing as Grok does.

> How is this exoneration?

I don't know; you tell me where I said it was? I'm just stating a fact that Grok isn't unique here, and if you want to ban Grok because of it then you need to also ban open weight models which can do exactly the same thing.

> that's a different class of software. I'm talking about other generative AI models

And the article is talking about a social media site. A different class of software and company.

> if you want to ban Grok

Straw man. Nobody has suggested this.

I think he is talking about France who does very much seem like they want to ban X and Grok?

> France who does very much seem like they want to ban X and Grok?

Source? I’m not seeing that in the French-language press.

If Grok is a child pornography tool then it will be banned. If Elon doesn't want Grok to be banned, he can disable the child pornography feature.

Agreed, thankfully, there is no CSAM feature, and they patched it in a couple of days so that it would stop obeying requests to do so and banned the users abusing Grok for that purpose. Once they prove they have put the appropriate mechanisms in place to make sure it doesn't happen again it's fine and dandy, no?

If by patched you mean he made it cost money.

Can you go on Twitter right now and generate CSAM using Grok?

> Agreed, thankfully, there is no CSAM feature, and they patched it in a couple of days so that it would stop obeying requests to do so and banned the users abusing Grok for that purpose.

The order, over several days, was:

* banned users and took down tweets requesting the content, without taking down the content that they clearly knew of, since they responded against the requests that generated it.

* Made the feature paid-only.

* Took down content and restricted the functionality.

> Once they prove they have put the appropriate mechanisms in place to make sure it doesn't happen again it's fine and dandy, no?

I’m not sure all jurisdictions involved will see knowing generation and dissemination of nonconsensual, including child, pornography as the kind of thing where “I promise not to do itt again, so we’re cool, right?” works, but we’ll see.

Maybe tying together an uncensored AI model and a social network just isn't something that's ethical / should be legal to do.

There are many things where each is legal/ethical to provide, and where combining them might make business sense, but where we, as a society have decided to not allow combining them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com