When the Boss Is Always Right, the AI Will Be Wrong
Smartest man in the universe? Grok thinks so.
Photographer: Stefani Reynold/Bloomberg
Elon Musk has said that Grok, xAI’s chatbot, is, “the smartest AI in the world.” And can you blame him? After all, Grok recently declared that Musk’s “intelligence ranks among the top 10 minds in history, rivaling polymaths like da Vinci or Newton through transformative innovations in multiple fields.” What’s more, the bot explained that its boss “edges out” basketball icon LeBron James “in holistic fitness,” would win in a fight against multi-time world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and is the “world’s greatest lover.”
Musk claims that these responses were the result of “adversarial prompting,” a way of tricking AIs into giving answers that they were not designed to provide. And since the initial barrage of florid praise, Grok has toned down its responses. When asked similar questions today, it still throws in gratuitous praise of Musk, but no longer calls him a better athlete than James and claims that some of its prior statements were tongue-in-cheek.