Elon Musk has been fighting a long battle against Wikipedia that might have just reached its climax, as a new AI-powered invention has driven people to label the billionaire a 'dangerous sociopath'.
There has been a consistent tirade against Wikipedia that has been championed by Elon Musk in recent years, as the world's richest man has repeated criticized the online encyclopedia for being 'too woke' and 'broken' following revisions made by its many community editors.
Musk has called for Wikipedia to be defunded on a number of occasions due to the way he claims it represents far-right individuals and movements, taking aim at the number of times that political extremisim is mentioned alongside far-right activity, alongside the decision to deem US President Donald Trump a fascist.
He accused the site of sharing 'propaganda' from legacy media sources, and claimed the site is "controlled by far-left activists" in previous posts on social media, leading to his decision to start what he has called Grokipedia — an AI-powered 'replacement'.
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Powered, as the name suggests, by Musk's own AI tool Grok, the site is in his words "an open source knowledge repository that is vastly better than Wikipedia," and one that "will be available to the public with no limits on use."
It appears as if the platform's content is generated by, as per SFGATE, "an ambiguous mix of crowdsourcing and its owner's proprietary AI software," leading to some rather staggering results that we've already seen a glimpse of through Grok's racist 'malfunctions' on X.
For example, the Grokipedia entry on Adolf Hitler appears to suggest that the Holocaust might have been "the unintended outcome of bureaucratic radicalization and wartime improvisation," giving a new lens to Holocaust denial, and that's just the beginning of what amounts to broadly far-right leaning and often racist entries.
There are even many instances in more 'uncontroversial' topics where Grokipedia outright plagiarises content word-for-word from Wikipedia, including an entry on Alice in Chains as pointed out by SFGATE, making many wonder the real purpose of this so-called alternative.
Understandably, many have thrown heavy criticism towards both Grokipedia and Elon Musk, with one comment on Reddit offering a sentiment that many agree with in the replies.
"I think this man is dangerous," the user begins. "He sees himself as a messiah. He is a sociopath who has no problem lying and cheating because he doesn't see them as either."
Another added in the replies that "sociopath is the right word," with a third asserting that "only the most egotistical and sociopathic person would think they are the most important person in the world."