A Short Read
Today: news that Grok, an AI bot inside X (Twitter) has begun producing antisemitic comments to relatively ordinary questions:
“The comments were part of a flood of offensive responses offered by Grok in recent days that shocked even users who have become accustomed to offensive speech on X. In a statement posted on xAI’s account for Grok, company officials said they are ‘aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.’ They said they would improve Grok’s training model.” (source)
A story by Israeli author Etgar Keret, from the collection titled Autocorrect, had an incident very like this, though set in the future when all information comes from a bot named Sigmund:
“Simple queries on Sigmund, the most popular search engine of the day, received peculiar answers that occasionally bordered on trolling: a young man from Stuttgart wondered where he could buy cut-rate designer shoes and was told he’d be better off barefoot. An elderly woman from Wisconsin asked when Thanksgiving would be celebrated that year and was answered wryly: ‘Whenever you’re feeling most thankful.’ And a Chinese student from Shanghai University who wanted Sigmund to recommend the best antidepressant in the world was given the chemical formula for hydrogen cyanide.”
The very short stories in this collection make many pointed observations about life in modern times, especially in Israel, where things seem to me to be even more off-kilter than what we are living through now in the USA.
Review © 2025 mae sander
1 comment:
What has happened, and is happening, in Israel is perhaps the most shocking of all. Who ever thought it could come to this?
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