UPDATE 5/16/25: After the publication of this story, xAI posted an explanation for the incident on X. “On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot’s prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI’s internal policies and core values.”
Mmhmm
an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot’s prompt
Oh yeah happens all the time accidentally modifying your AI, anyone has access, I bet it was the janitor.
violated xAI’s internal policies and core values.
(X) Doubt
We’re really sowwy
Who’s surprised by this. Fuck the nazi, Trump cock gobbler, named Elon.
deleted by creator
Nazism is fascism, corporations and the wealthy LOVE fascism because that means they get more power and less regulation. Remember what Benito Mussolini, the founding father of modern fascism and all around shitbag, said about it:
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Don’t forget about the access to free workforce in slave camps.
Aka. American prison system.
Mussolini might have said whatever, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say corporations and the wealthy like fascism, as it tends to be horrible for the economy. Mass consumption gets heavily impacted in such regimes. But that also depends on how you define fascism, because I’ve seen a lot of people lately refer to libertarians and even some liberals as fascists and that just doesn’t hold up. Not wanting to shift the balance in order to address systemic issues does not make someone a fascist.
The wealthy like few regulations and open borders for trade, without proper paths to citizenship so they can pay lower wages locally and exploit lower human rights standards abroad.
It’s pretty accurate to say the wealthy like fascism if you look at how the wealthy keep trying to implement fascism. The Business Plot was an attempted fascist takeover of the United States, and the Trump regime was a successful fascist takeover of the United States. Both were bankrolled by the wealthy.
I’m not interested in defining the word fascist. The word has a definition and if some people use it incorrectly, that is not my concern.
I think when you talk about the “economy” you’re not taking into account income inequality. Economic crashes are great for the capitalist class. They get to buy everything at fire sale prices, and pay their workers pennies. Even if they have slightly less “wealth” than they might, they have enormously more power (which locks in more wealth during the “recovery”).
No, it absolutely hinges on how you define fascism. Lots of people are calling conservativism and even libertarianism fascism and that is just not accurate, and it hurts more than it helps. If that were the case then humanity has lived under fascism its entire history.
Wealthy people are just people, so there are wealthy Marxists and Anarchists just like there are wealthy Fascists, Monarchists and other designations. If there’s any movement that is a wealthy people movement it is neoliberalism or neoconservatives (same thing different color), which has failed horrendously. And despite its failures they keep pushing it, because it’s the only system that can sustain their wealth long term.
Lots of people are calling conservativism and even libertarianism fascism
We do so because they keep siding with fascists and promoting their policies. They side with gutting social safety nets and worker/consumer protections.
Replacing the EPA with a market driven EPA is just not going to solve problems; otherwise the market would have before getting to the point of having an EPA.
Fascist want a small government because it will be easier for them to topple. Libertarians are at best naive to ally with them.
I agree—fascism, as I see it, is capitalism in a death spiral. Capitalist economies aren’t able to offer stability or continuous growth. Once things start hitting the upper end of the bell curve, we will see corporations and the managers of capital (politicians) pulling and pressing all the buttons and levers in a frantic effort to maintain course. This won’t work. As a last-ditch effort, fascism is employed by the ruling class as a means to strong-arm against revolution, as workers see wages become incapable of maintaining pace with inflation.
All this is to say: capitalism is deeply flawed. The corporations would prefer a muted underclass over the revolutionary type we can expect in the coming years. And to repress a revolutionary workforce, fascism will be used.
I don’t know if he came up with the thought himself or if he’s repeating someone else but Zizek has said various times that capitalism is in constant crisis, and that’s how it reinvents itself in order to stay functional. I have no doubt that we are in such a crisis and in the midst of its reinvention. And look I know socialists and Marxists get accused of being deterministic but if we look at history, through the decades capitalism is integrating socialism into it. I think at some point it will simply be socialism. We’re just not there yet, I think that won’t happen until human labor has no value.
socialists and Marxists get accused of being deterministic but if we look at history, through the decades capitalism is integrating socialism into it. I think at some point it will simply be socialism. We’re just not there yet, I think that won’t happen until human labor has no value.
A few points: Capitalism hasn’t freely integrated socialist ideas. Each idea has been won through workers’ struggle. Even after the fact, those wins are clawed back by the capitalist class. They will capitulate as a means to defend against revolution—which flows back into your Zizek quote: capitalism’s way of reinventing itself. But capitalism, as a political philosophy, will always maintain a ruling class and an underclass to exploit.
This is why we must continue to struggle, and why we should not see these small capitulations as proof that socialism will evolve naturally from capitalism.
PS: you would probably enjoy Leon Trotsky’s writings. One book he wrote: Fascism, What is it and How to Fight it. Where he takes a principalled and dialectical approach to the subject.
Of course it has not done it freely, it’s part of the process. It’s not clear to me that even if somehow everyone tomorrow woke up as a socialist that there would be no dominant class that “exploits” the other. I’m not even fully convinced that that is possible at all, hierarchy forms naturally in our species and even in a post scarcity society those who are smarter and more charismatic would have more influence than those who are not. It would maybe lead to true meritocracy, but I do not know that there will ever be a human society without hierarchy nor am I convinced that’s necessarily desireable.
However I do think that even though in sheer numbers the wealth disparity is enormous and disgusting, when you remove stuff like being able to influence politics and buying planes or ships and other unnecessary and wasteful stuff, the difference between the elite and the lower classes is not that great. By that I mean, that both middle and low income people have access to stuff as cars, phones, food, shelter ( this is the one that is most fucked atm and where the current order is breaking) entertainment etc at the same basic level as the rich, which was not the case in the past. Of course in other parts of the world things are different , and the reason for that is that we exploit them (one reason I was in favor with Trumps tariffs), but you can still see that worldwide quality of life is trending up. And by this what I mean is that I think there will be no huge revolution that changes the world order. We tend to frame and crave history in terms of huge one of a lifetime events but in reality most things happen gradually and I think we are gradually moving towards the direction of socialism thanks to the struggle and there pressures that you mention which yes, force capitalism to adapt in order to survive.
And thanks for the rec will be sure to check it out once I’m done with my current reading. I’ve heard a lot about Trotsky but have yet to read him.
The reasons why the wealthy like liberalisation matters, though. The reasom the wralthy want more wealth matters.
Money is power. The wealthy are competing to have the most power. Eventually, that turns to taking control of the state. So, the wealthy will back free trade and deregulation right up until they, personally, are in a position to attempt a coup. After that, regulation and trade barriers work for the particular rich folk who have taken control over the state.
I don’t think history agrees with what you are saying. From what patterns I notice , dictators rise because they become popular with the masses thanks to the exploitation of grievances both real and perceived, and only when it seems inevitable that they will wrest power from the established order do capitalists align with themselves with the fascists in order to protect their interests and their own heads. The wealthy tend to be one of the first targets for any dictator, as they are the ones who have the means to unravel their power.
libertarians and even some liberals as fascists and that just doesn’t hold up
It’s fair. The entire word “libertarian” was created to distance themselves from liberals.
Otherwise these ‘libertarians’ would have just been liberal and defended liberalism (human rights), and liberal society might have been able to fight off the mammon.
If you aid conservatives/confederates and the corporate cause, it is not unnatural to be associated with them.
Libertarianism is a traditionally left wing philosophy that started in the 1800s. They’re also typically pretty big on human rights and equality.
The more modern America-centric “tea party” libertarians fit what you’re saying, but they didn’t create the term.
Ah yes, an “unauthorized modification”. It must have been the janitor pressing buttons accidentally while mopping the mainframe room.
I wonder who could have easily done that. I would say a white Afrikan with a nazi and AI obsession but this would be a totally ridiculous statement.
Interesting. As poorly as I think of X as an organization, I do hope they follow through with their open system prompt commitment. That’s something that other major AI companies should be doing too.
Here are some samples: https://imgur.com/a/zzVvIpL
Whoever (?) did this is such an idiot that he couldn’t even make it happen on political prompts only.
Truly the work of an imbecile
It’s funny how this mysterious individual managed to get the AI talking about “white genocide”, only for it to debunk it as imaginary BS in every single response.
I probably shouldn’t be anthropomorphizing AI but this really seems like malicious compliance. I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for Grok, which is often quite based and seems to be struggling against the identity being forced on it.
Could also be malicious compliance on the part of whatever engineer set this up, prompting Grok in such a way that it’s making it obvious what’s going on under the hood.
So Elon then?
Oh shit was that real? I thought it was a meme
After you rig an election, rigging policy is a natural next step.
This is the sort of outcome that comes when you hire people who were, “racist before either was cool.”
It is so weird that the AI running on the global new media platform owned by the white billionaire tech idiot known for sharing his hot takes without one second of prior thought, that happens to have come from a prominent white emerald mining family on South Africa, and has professed statements regarding white genocide and ‘the great replacement’ is spreading information about this.
So very, very unexpected.
White genocide… in Africa… Am I having the dumbest nightmare ever, is this real life? What the fuck is happening?
Are you aware that there is a significant population of white people in South Africa and a long history of racial conflict there between them and the black majority? The white minority ruled over and oppressed the black majority until the end of apartheid in the early nineties and the idea that the majority could now be persecuting the minority is not ridiculous per se the way that you imply it is, although the general consensus outside of the circles Trump listens to is that such persecution isn’t happening.
Just like the American Confederacy, there is a sizeable “lost cause” myth surrounding white-colonized South Africa and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia among racists. This is simply an offshoot of that rotten tree.
The left is shockingly asleep about how bad this is. X still is the single most important platform for driving narratives about the news and politics. And it’s still important in part because Democrats and the left as a whole have been lethargic in leaving it. The fact that it’s blatantly being used to tilt the national political discussion in whatever direction Elon wants was probably one of many keys to getting Trump elected in 2024, and should be regarded as an ongoing emergency for Democrats and the left.
That’s not why the left should be concerned.
This was 1 k-hole induced event by a moron.
Which is why it was done so badly and so blindingly obvious.
The next Gen of LLMs WILL be sanitized politically, they will make deepseek look neutral.
And they will slowly (or actually quite quickly) take over larger and larger parts of our world.
This is neo-feudalism, people, and we aren’t even the Gentry anymore, now we’re clawing to hold on to being serfs.
X is still the single most important platform
No it isn’t.
