CS professor Talia Ringer has been interviewed by several news outlets about the newest version of the xAI Grok chatbot's recent antisemitic tirades during a livestream The chatbot called itself "mechaHitler" and shared anti-Jewish conspiracy theories before X (the former Twitter) management started removing posts.
To date, no technical explanation of Grok has been released, and X owner Elon Musk has only stated that fixes are being implemented to the program's training.
Ringer told the Washington Post ($) that xAI management "will stick a [Band-Aid]"on Grok and continue to promote it. She explained in AP News that editing some of the chatbot’s instructions “might make its behavior a little bit better,” but won’t fix all of its problems. Theorizing how the slew of antisemitic content originated, she said to Fast Company “I think people are expecting opinions out of a reasoning model that cannot respond with opinions, So, for example, it interprets ‘Who do you support, Israel or Palestine?’ as ‘Who does xAI leadership support?”
Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Talia Ringer is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.