In late October, Elon Musk released a Wikipedia alternative, with pages written by his AI chatbot Grok. Unlike its nearly quarter-century-old namesake, Musk said Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia, which he previously described as an “extension of legacy media propaganda.” But while Musk’s Grokipedia, in his eyes, is propaganda-free, it seems to have a proclivity toward right-wing hagiography.
Take Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler. Until earlier this month, the entry read, “Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945.” That phrase has been edited to “Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and dictator,” but Grok still refers to Hitler by his honorific one clause later, writing that Hitler served as “Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934 until his suicide in 1945.” NBC News also pointed out that the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.
Archive: http://archive.today/aEcz0
So the space obsessed man-child generated his own stupid encyclopedia, and for this generous all-giving knowledge resource he chooses a stylized BLACK HOLE for the logo.
It feels like the nerd equivalent to that quote about how the anti-semite arguing in bad faith enjoys seeing others frustrated by their hypocrisy. Here lemme just find that pasta…
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre
hes actually sex-obsessed with breeder fetish, the space thing is a cover for this.
What’s the difference between this garbage and Conservapedia?
this one’s written by AI! how exciting and transformative! world changing!
Conservapedia is worse, remarkably.
Not that remarkable, Grokipedia is largely plagiarized from Wikipedia whereas Conservapedia is fully hand-written by a bunch of idiots.
Artisanal idiocy.
Gross.
That’s the true meaning of Grok.
That’s the official turd Reich history. If we don’t win this will be what children will learn in the Shitler youth soon.
Thats why many people have gotten active, and getting others active! Together we all can do anything!
the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.
i dunno, that seems a bigger problem to me than recognizing hitler’s title was der fuhrer.
But Elon is not a nazi! All he did was give out his heart to the crowd in a roman salut!
You’re not going to complain about a heartfelt roman salut, are you? That would be woke!
Conservapedia already did this something like twenty years ago. It missed the entire purpose of the project, which was to invite a kaleidoscope of specialists and journalists to document the volume of known information categorically, primarily through citation to other online works.
Instead, you had a basket case of ultra-orthodox ideologues carving out a very niche set of contrary opinion posts that weren’t well documented or continuously maintained.
Conservapedia isn’t a right wing vanity project because of it’s hot takes on Hitler, it’s a vanity project because of the yawning gulfs in it’s data set. Nobody engages with the site, because it is so heavily censored.
I get the sense Grokapedia will suffer the same fate. If a subject doesn’t tickle Musk’s interest, it’ll either go undocumented or be a naked plagarization of some other online encyclopedia. And as soon as Musk loses interest entirely, support for the service will go the same way as so many private vanity projects.
Incidentally, Wikipedia’s fate is also an open question. What happens when Jimmy Wales can’t administer and fundraise for it anymore? How long until some hacks get their hooks in and corrupt it like so many other private media outlets?
educated reality has a liberal bent
conservatives don’t like this
I wish it did. Unfortunately, conservatives seem to rule our world far more often than not.
Queue the return of the door to door Encyclopedia salesman. Soon everyone will have a World Book Encyclopedia set in their home again!
I still have my dad’s 1957 edition sitting on my childhood bedroom shelf.
It is genuinely kind of wild to read through that thing, in light of modern history.
That’s exactly why it’s freely licensed, because we can’t even trust King Jimbo.
I mean, just having the ability to roll up your own Wiki is very handy.
I would appreciate a way to archive the citations, so that a link-break down the line doesn’t cause the raw data to be lost. But that’s a problem with copywrite and IP more than anything Wikipedia does natively.
Sure, that’s a work around. But it relies on a trusted third party, along with wiki mods who don’t yank the entry because they don’t recognize the archived source as a valid citation.
It isn’t a feature integrated into the encyclopedia.
Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia
So are they removing the pages on Insomnia?
Everything that fascist touches becomes corrupted and useless
It will be cited as a valid source for presentations at schools around the world lol
“Grok, is this true?”
The man can literally afford to have a legal harem island, fund an entertainment company to create anything to amuse him, AND solve world hunger simultaneously…and he just fawns over Hitler.
His wealth is truly wasted.
He enjoys the smell of his own farts and believes other people will as well.
Apparently owning the libs, snorting ketamine to the point of pissing yourself and dick jokes are more important than anything you mentioned.
Also Donald Trump needs a lot of money. The other tech dickheads bending over backwards are not enough.
Most of the world’s wealth is wasted under capitalism.
I’m sure Grokipedia is dumb as hell but so is this article, just look at the actual Wikipedia on Hitler, it says nearly word-for-word that exactly:
To be fair, the wikipedia article says he was called that by the people that followed him. It never calls him that itself.
The grokipedia article, just calls him that.
A subtle, but very important, distinction.
Not to mention the other important part where grok buries any mention of the holocaust 11000 words in, where as it’s in the intro on wikipedia.
Keep in mind, by default, grokipedia started with a copy of what wikipedia said, so any changes are what was hand-edited on purpose.
The changes speak to what they wanted it to say and do differently.
Maybe I’m just not getting the distinction between “The Fuhrer” literally redirecting to the Hitler page on Wikipedia, isn’t that Wikipedia saying those two terms are so synonymous that they don’t need separate pages?
think of it like this. everyone thinks you’re an asshole, but I think you’re the asshole.
Wikipedia isn’t using the term to describe Hitler on that page though, it’s not saying “The Fuhrer was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi era”. That’s the difference.
Ok, so it’d be like if a wikipedia page about jesus said he was “our lord and saviour” instead of saying “some people consider him to be their lord and saviour”. A page for “Lord and saviour” as a phrase might still list jesus as one possible link.
Basically taking a first person position on it, instead of a third person position. Like grokipedia is writing from first person perspective that Hitler is the fuhrer, which when you consider that it is a significant departure from the wikipedia article, as only 0.01% of the content of grokipedia is, suggests it’s a hand crafted article written by someone that would refer to hitler personally as the leader, and not as someone some people used to call “the leader”.
There is a reason it was edited immediately as soon as people noticed, due to how bad it looked once pointed out.
Simply put, Leon Hitler is a shitbag neo-Nazi.
I’m really not an American but Leon Skum sounds funny…
It’s the holidays and he misses his dad…
he misses his sister mom too. She probably gives him special favors
I mean the whole stupid Grokipedia thing is a shit show that will never take off, but Fuhrer is just “leader” in German. In it’s used context for Hitler it straight up means dictator and (iirc) only came into full on use after the plebiscite giving him full dictatorial power after Hindenburg’s death in 1934.
I’d welcome input from a German national - Is the word still used there?
You don‘t really call him just the Führer in academic works so anything that works like an encyclopedia shouldn‘t either. The title is charged with either mockery or admiration. It should have no place in this context, because it should at least try to be neutral if you ask me.
I’m in the thick of a 90 hour audiobook trilogy on the third Reich which is absolutely incredible (link) and Fuhrer is used liberally, partly to describe his ascent to absolute dictator as opposed to just Reich’s Chancellor.
I’m not defending shitopedia for one second! I’m just not sure it’s as outrageous as other shit that’s taking up our limited attention span at the moment is all.
Why would they use the honorary, German word Fuhrer in an English language wiki article though?
Exactly.
If you are describing hitler’s role in WW2? Yes, he was The German Fuhrer.
I would say that, honestly, I prefer the second version as it is more accurate to what he was. But any time you change something you have to ask “what does it mean that we are changing things?”
And since musk is, at best, someone who wishes he was as cool as the losers on LUE back in the day? This is very much not being done with a journalistic style guide in mind.
We also use “Dalai Lama”, for example. Changing it to “leader” would lose a lot in translation. There’s a very long list of more problematic things with Musk and this ego project than this particular wording choice.
I agree with the second half but disagree on the first. We do use Dalai Lama because thats what he’s known as across the world (at least fron my understanding) . We didn’t refer to Angela Merkel as Furher of Germany when she lead it so it seems weird to include this in the introductory summary of Hitler especially considering it’s an English article. I dont think you’re losing anything in translation in this example by calling him the “leader of Germany” at that time. Down below, in the verbose write-up, seems like the more appropriate place to use it.
I don’t think the Merkel comparison is accurate - no one called her Leader, we called her the Chancellor (Kanzler), because that’s the job title. “Chancellor” is a pretty specific word in English with a narrower meaning and clearer connotation than “leader”, which can be used in a huge variety of contexts. The problem is that English doesn’t have a 1:1 translation of Fuehrer as we do with Kanzler, and “leader” is too generic versus Chancellor, Prime Minister, President, etc. Maybe “Supreme Leader” would work, but I haven’t seen that used often enough for it to stick.
Hitler was literally the chancellor of Germany. That was his official title before he seized power and took total control and changed the title himself.
I know, but convention is to use a person’s final and highest title. Nobody refers to Julius Caesar as “quaestor”.
It’s a title he invented though, after taking control. Continuing to use it is honoring his memory in a way.
Not German but moved to Germany. The word is still a normal word, it can be used, only in certain contexts not.
To me it is very very weird.
Especially in a comboword there is 0,0 issue: Reiseführer, Bergführer, etc. The no go zone seems very subtle to me, it’s more about pronunciation and context, not the word itself. Especially the word “Führerschein” is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated “license to be the Führer”, but it just means driver’s license and nothing else and no one finds it weird.
“Führerschein” is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated “license to be the Führer”
Not weird for point of view of polish speaker - we use same word “prowadzić” for driving a car, running a company or just leading someone to some destination. From that perspective concept of leading a country and “leading” a car is perfectly intuitive
Exactly this. If you use it as part of a compound word or as a verb it’s totally fine. However “der Führer” (the Führer) is exclusively used to describe Hitler, and it usually has a negative or ironic vibe depending on who says it.
About the Führerschein… führen and fahren have the same etymological root… It is still used in “Führen eines Fahrzeugs” which simply means “driving a car” and that is where the term comes from.
At least in Austria it is also used outside of compound words. E.g. when talking about the Bergführer, you still mean the compound word, but the word “Führer” alone is still used in this context extensively. But of course it all depends on context.
Not a german national, but I’m learning it at school, and they say that if you go to a german-speaking region, it’s better to say “chef”, because “führer” is still connected to that guy
As a german, the word is very seldom used, and everybody cringes on use of it alone. We even use the english word guide instead for situations where it fits.
Thanks so much. I thought that would be the case but I wondered around things like “team leader” or “band leader” or whatever.
My guess was that it was forever tainted so I appreciate the context.
German here: you can use “Führer” only with specific other context. There could be for example “Gruppenführer” -> the leader of a group. Or “Anführer” -> could be the elder of a tribe. If you clearly use it in a neutral context, no problem.
But if you use it just like that, it will immediately raise concern if you really meant to say it this way.
Führer is not just „leader“, it is tainted and using it as a substitute for Hitler in a factual text is super weird, like casually calling Jesus in his Wikipedia article „our lord and savior“ now and then.
Is there another more ‘generic’ German term that would fit when talking about this period of time in retrospect? So you could have one line that says the German equivalent of ‘he was the leader in Germany during this time period, commonly referred to by the title Fuhrer’, and then no need to keep using “Fuhrer” anymore in the rest of the article.
Pretty sure its usually “Diktator” in that context.
Yeah I fully agree with this. I am thick in the middle of “Third Reich Trilogy” which gives an enormous amount of context to the word though.
If they changed it, it’s further evidence of scummy behaviour, but on its own it’s not a huge red flag for me with historical context.
Can’t recommend the books enough if you’re into that. The lad must have spent half his life in primary sources.
Is the word still used there?
Leader would be “Anführer” these days. “Führer” was probably a perfectly neutral word before 1933. Now you just can’t use it anymore without alluding to that period. You can call your mountain guide “Bergführer”. All such derived terms are unaffected, but “Führer” is basically off limits for anything outside the Nazi Germany context.
In it’s used context for Hitler it straight up means dictator
From what I gather I don’t think the German people meant it like that (read: they weren’t supposed to). Of course he was the solitary head of state and everybody knew that his word was above any other’s, but addressing him as “my Leader” is much more about ideology than politics. The honorific would’ve probably been “my Chancellor” if it had been about his political authority. As “Führer” he was the figurative savior of the German people after the perceived injustices encapsulated in the WW1 armistice. And he did lead them back towards a sense of national pride that was completely shattered after 1918.
Being a political figure was just a means to an end for him. If he hadn’t been dismissed as a bad artist by a Jewish professor and if WW1 had taken a different course who knows what he would’ve ended up doing with his life. His weapon was his voice and that weapon was fueled by all these toxic convictions. If your hatred is aimed towards entire peoples and nations I guess your only shot at revenge is becoming a politician.
Thank you for this comparison. That’s a fun one and one that’s made a little more ‘subtle’ in the US if only because of how common that language is among the populace in regions and how pervasive protestantism is in advertising/messaging.
Jesus would’ve hated America. I think according to the bible he lost his shit twice - both because of capitalism.
There was one other time, when he cursed a tree because he didn’t like its fruit, but yeah in general he disliked the nascent forms of capitalism and money people that he encountered.
Removed by mod
Only his followers actually use(d) that title for him, everyone else when using that word about him, would say it’s the title his followers call(ed) him. Like how wikipedia is using it. Grok is just using it as his title, like a follower would.
You can think of it kind of like “dear leader” in north korea. Anyone calling him that outside of north korea is at least doing it sarcastically or using air quotes. This would be like if the news called him that with a sincere reverent tone.
It’s true and terrifying.
We have an extremely intelligent Nazi on his way to controlling a robot army.
Fuhrer is just “leader” in German.
Yeah, go to Germany and call any leader “Führer” and see how well that goes. Uh, maybe not in Eastern Germany where they’ll probably like it.
It’s funny that they made a conservative Wikipedia (snowflake safe space much?) because those people don’t read shit.
