On Monday, a new online “encyclopedia†sputtered to life. Grokipedia is the brainchild of Elon Musk and his startup xAI, and the billionaire is promoting it as a supposedly less woke and less biased version of Wikipedia. Musk’s goal? “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
In both format and style, Grokipedia bears a striking resemblance to Wikipedia, albeit a very basic version. Entries are organized with headings, subheadings, citations, and a list of sources at the end. Each article also claims to have been fact-checked by Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot, though it’s not clear what this “fact-checking†involves. Also unclear is how the 885,279 entries, as currently listed on Grokipedia’s homepage, are created and by what or whom.
Much of the content on Grokipedia is also suspiciously similar to Wikipedia. In many cases, articles are practically — and sometimes literally — clones of their Wikipedia counterparts. But for entries tackling topics that jar with Musk’s personal worldview, many articles take on a remarkably different tone. Here, Grokipedia abruptly veers into right-wing talking points, factual inaccuracies, critiques of mainstream media, and unfounded conspiracy theories. At times, Grokipedia is overtly racist and transphobic. Musk comes off alright, though. He and his businesses are often painted in a rosy light.
A pattern plays out for other entries covering firmly settled science. On the Vaccines and autism page, Wikipedia states that “extensive investigation into vaccines and autism spectrum disorder has shown that there is no relationship between the two, causal or otherwise, and that vaccine ingredients do not cause autism†and notes the overwhelming “consensus that vaccines are safe†from scientists and medical bodies like the WHO, CDC, and FDA. Grokipedia is more circumspect. Its entry only rejects the idea that MMR vaccines cause autism, it lends credence to so-called vaccine-skeptical views by calling the idea a “hypothesis,†and the sole mention of scientific consensus is to say how a recent CDC contract signals “sustained policy momentum despite opposition from mainstream scientific consensus bodies.†For covid origins, Grokipedia again fails to acknowledge consensus and amplifies suggestions the virus was engineered, while Wikipedia repeatedly describes allegations of genome engineering as “misinformation or misrepresentations of scientific evidence.â€
Similarly, Grokipedia’s entry on climate change is another sign that Musk might inhabit a world with a more fungible concept of reality. As The Verge’s Jay Peters notes, Grokipedia glosses over what Wikipedia says is a “nearly unanimous scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that this is caused by human activities†to, instead, highlight “heightened public alarm†caused by media and advocacy organizations like Greenpeace.
These scientific Grokipedia entries read like twisted Wikipedia articles, but more political entries are a nastier departure. Grokipedia’s entry for Transgender deploys the term “transgenderism†multiple times. Wikipedia, meanwhile, notes that the term “has come to be viewed as a pejorative.”
Unlike the Wikipedia entry for Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower and former US Army intelligence analyst who shared secret intelligence with WikiLeaks in 2010, the Grokipedia entry on her life deadnames and misgenders her at length.
As spotted on Bluesky, Grokipedia’s entry on Race and intelligence claims that science shows some races are more intelligent than others — and even lists the so-called IQ scores of different races. Wikipedia’s entry by the same name, meanwhile, points out that differences in IQ scores can’t be explained by genetics. (Grokipedia writes that “the extent to which genetics contribute to between-group differences remains contentious.â€) The policy section of the Grokipedia entry also cites the pseudoscientific journal Mankind Quarterly, known for publishing “race science†and having ties to white nationalism.
While Wikipedia calls the January 6th attack on the US Capitol an “attempted self-coup,†Grokipedia’s language about “widespread claims of voting irregularities†seemingly justifies the riot by President Donald Trump supporters, and downplays the violence by saying that “most†insurrectionists “carried no firearms and the incursion was cleared within hours.†Wikipedia readers will learn, instead, that Congress itself found the riot to be an unsuccessful, but purposeful, part of Trump’s plan to overturn the election.
Wikipedia describes George Floyd as a Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in an event that set off a wave of nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. On Grokipedia, Floyd is best known for his criminal record, starting with a sentence that is difficult to read as anything other than intentionally racist: “George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an American man with a lengthy criminal record including convictions for armed robbery, drug possession, and theft in Texas from 1997 to 2007.†Readers don’t learn that Floyd was murdered until the fourth sentence of Grokipedia’s entry.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is notably absent from Grokipedia, which is odd given that Elon Musk ran the short-term quasi-government agency tasked by President Trump with supposedly eliminating waste in the federal government. (Grokipedia directs users to the Shiba Inu internet meme instead.) Wikipedia readers can learn about DOGE’s role in mass layoffs of federal workers and dismantling long-standing federal agencies, despite DOGE’s own unclear government authority.
At least one person comes off very well: Musk. Grokipedia entries on him and his businesses feel like an editor has taken an airbrush to Wikipedia articles. There’s no mention of his father’s emerald interests in his Grokipedia biography, for example, downplaying his family wealth as “relative affluence.†Wikipedia, meanwhile, makes three mentions of emeralds, excluding citations, and describes his family as “wealthy.†It also references his grandfather having pro-Nazi and apartheid views, a detail that is absent on Grokipedia.
His companies and their products fare better on Grokipedia. On the whole, they’re significantly longer. The article on Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, is four times the length of its Wikipedia counterpart. Neuralink’s article is triple, and Tesla’s Cybertruck is almost double. The language is more flattering, too. The entry covering SpaceX makes no mention of Musk’s failed efforts to acquire technology from Russia and paints its environmental problems in a much more favorable light than Wikipedia. Grokipedia’s Cybertruck page barely mentions the litany of safety issues or recalls, instead criticizing the media for being biased against Tesla and focusing on outlier complaints, while the Optimus page pays far less attention to criticism over Musk’s outlandish predictions, timelines, and hype.
Original Source: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/808514/grokipedia-wikipedia-comparison
Original Source: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/808514/grokipedia-wikipedia-comparison
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