Comment by simonw
1 day ago
Elon obviously wants Grok to reflect his viewpoints, and has said so multiple times.
I do not think he wants it to openly say "I am now searching for tweets from:elonmusk in order to answer this question". That's plain embarrassing for him.
That's what I meant by "I think there is a good chance this behavior is unintended".
I really like your posts, and they're generally very clearly written. Maybe this one's just the odd duck out, as it's hard for me to find what you actually meant (as clarified in your comment here) in this paragraph:
> This suggests that Grok may have a weird sense of identity—if asked for its own opinions it turns to search to find previous indications of opinions expressed by itself or by its ultimate owner. I think there is a good chance this behavior is unintended!
I'd say it's far more likely that:
1. Elon ordered his research scientists to "fix it" – make it agree with him
2. They did RL (probably just basic tool use training) to encourage checking for Elon's opinions
3. They did not update the UI (for whatever reason – most likely just because research scientists aren't responsible for front-end, so they forgot)
4. Elon is likely now upset that this is shown so obviously
The key difference is that I think it's incredibly unlikely that this is emergent behavior due to an "sense of identity", as opposed to direct efforts of the xAI research team. It's likely also a case of https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anticipatory_obedience.
That's why I said "I think there is a good chance" - I think what you describe here (anticipatory obedience) is possible too, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised to hear that the from:elonmusk searches genuinely were unintended behavior.
I find this as accidental behavior almost more interesting than a deliberate choice.
What if searching for Elon's tweets was indeed intended, but it wasn't supposed to show up in the UI?
Willison's razor: Never dismiss behaviors as either malice or stupidity when there's a much more interesting option that can be explored.
Occam's razor would seem to apply here.
> That's plain embarrassing for him
You think that's the tipping point of him being embarrassed?