I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, having been in IT for about 45 years, and using LLMs both casually and professionally in various ways for quite a while -- but it is really hard to get away from the brain's natural tendency toward anthropomorphism of... well, almost everything... I try to catch myself and self-correct, but I still find myself using "human" language around these chatbot systems from time to time.
For non-technical people, drawing that distinction is even harder since they don't have the vocabulary to describe what LLMs really are, nor the insight to be able to distinguish human-produced output from machine-produced output a lot of the time.
The press really should be educating the general public here but... a lot of the mainstream media seems to have completely abdicated any responsibility at this point :(
But can we? Or, more specifically, can the media do better than this? Day after day, they find new ways to fail at the most basic aspects of the job they should be doing. Yes, demand better from them, but at this point how could anyone expect better?
And did we all ask for this? "Hey, could you please use up all our electricity and what's left of our water generating child pornography?" No, we did not. A handful of billionaires thought it would be fun and profitable, and now here we are. These assholes should NOT have the money and power they have.
I hit send accidentally before the rest of my comment:
This is revolting and 100% unacceptable and criminally neglectful. Possibly intentionally criminal abuse, but how can we even address any harmful possibility if the human creators do not respond and the questions aren’t asked directly to those humans by journalists and authorities? We have to quash this dismissal and disregard of real accountability immediately.
Grok has been proven to be unreliable and downright scary in various situations time and time again. Innocent people are being incredibly easily AND EASILY PREVENTABLY harmed by this. Common sense safeguards would have prevented it. Computers cannot be trusted or reprimanded and cannot face consequences of crimes and harmfully abusive and neglectful actions. The accountability rests solely with the products creators: i.e., Musk and his developers.
raises an interesting question. People have free speech under the First Amendment. Corporations do, under the misreading in Citizen's United about what corporation personhood is. Does a non-sentient LLM have First Amendment rights? I'd say no, and if the corporation behind it won't take responsibility for what it says, I'd say Grok can be sued for, inter alia, slander when one is falsely portrayed as nude.
Musk's role as Primary Pimp for the Plutocratic Pervocracy should surprise no one given the contextual evidence in the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn in response to death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf (As a mostly retired, near-lifelong journalist, I recognize this link should be a standard part of anti-Christonazi/anti-Regime disclosures and commentary. I am doing my best to make it so and will continue as long as I am able. But I am 85 years old and terminally ill, hence am dependent on others to pick up and carry this particular torch when I am gone.)
Partisan outrage farming. The produce is lacking any real nutritional value, but provides emotive evergy to feed Musk Derangement Syndrome which is a proxy to Trump Derangenent Syndrome which is a proxy to liberal unresolved childhood issues.
A straight question Frank won't be answering: Should there be a machine on the internet that generates pornographic images of real children on demand?
The correct answer is "no", of course, but I'm betting what we'll get from Frank is either: 1) Complete silence because he can never answer a straight question, or 2) A cloud of squid ink and misdirection and a lengthy rant about Hunter Biden's laptop.
A straight question that SteveB will not be answering: Should the Internet be open to adults grooming children to submit themselves to the trans ideology medical industrial complex to get their hormonal development corrupted and their genitals mutilated before they have enough frontal lobe development and real life experience required to make good life choices?
It's wild, isn't it? Any normal person could simply say, "Yes, it's wrong to have a machine on the internet that turns little girls school pictures into pornography." But Frank CAN'T say that, because then he'd be agreeing with US.
Never forget the basic definition of Conservatism, "The opposite of what liberals believe, updated hourly."
It's wild, isn't it? Any normal person could simply say, "yes, it is wrong to encourage young children and hormonal teens to undergo hormones and surgery to change their gender," But SteveB CAN'T say that because they he'd be agreeing with MAGA and normal Americans.
Never forget the basic definition of Democratism: "The opposite of what Trump and MAGA support."
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, having been in IT for about 45 years, and using LLMs both casually and professionally in various ways for quite a while -- but it is really hard to get away from the brain's natural tendency toward anthropomorphism of... well, almost everything... I try to catch myself and self-correct, but I still find myself using "human" language around these chatbot systems from time to time.
For non-technical people, drawing that distinction is even harder since they don't have the vocabulary to describe what LLMs really are, nor the insight to be able to distinguish human-produced output from machine-produced output a lot of the time.
The press really should be educating the general public here but... a lot of the mainstream media seems to have completely abdicated any responsibility at this point :(
"We can do better than this."
But can we? Or, more specifically, can the media do better than this? Day after day, they find new ways to fail at the most basic aspects of the job they should be doing. Yes, demand better from them, but at this point how could anyone expect better?
I fear we cannot and will not "do better" until we find the courage to evolve the disciplined solidarity essential to liberate ourselves from the Christonazi successor to Nazi Germany that der neu Führer already calls his "unified Reich." (See https://www.npr.org/2024/05/21/1252653231/trump-unified-reich-antisemitism-truth-social )
Eliminating the fallacious legal concept of corporate personhood is the only path to executive accountability.
"Legacy media lies." Yeah, well, my eyes don't, and they've now seen some truly reprehensible content via xAI. Sickening stuff.
And did we all ask for this? "Hey, could you please use up all our electricity and what's left of our water generating child pornography?" No, we did not. A handful of billionaires thought it would be fun and profitable, and now here we are. These assholes should NOT have the money and power they have.
I hit send accidentally before the rest of my comment:
This is revolting and 100% unacceptable and criminally neglectful. Possibly intentionally criminal abuse, but how can we even address any harmful possibility if the human creators do not respond and the questions aren’t asked directly to those humans by journalists and authorities? We have to quash this dismissal and disregard of real accountability immediately.
Grok has been proven to be unreliable and downright scary in various situations time and time again. Innocent people are being incredibly easily AND EASILY PREVENTABLY harmed by this. Common sense safeguards would have prevented it. Computers cannot be trusted or reprimanded and cannot face consequences of crimes and harmfully abusive and neglectful actions. The accountability rests solely with the products creators: i.e., Musk and his developers.
raises an interesting question. People have free speech under the First Amendment. Corporations do, under the misreading in Citizen's United about what corporation personhood is. Does a non-sentient LLM have First Amendment rights? I'd say no, and if the corporation behind it won't take responsibility for what it says, I'd say Grok can be sued for, inter alia, slander when one is falsely portrayed as nude.
CNBC's updated article was good, I think. The title: "Musk’s xAI faces backlash after Grok generates sexualized images of children on X".
The fourth sentence is: Grok posts are AI-generated messages and do not stand in for official company statements.
Edit: Forgot to include the link to the article:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/02/musk-grok-ai-bot-safeguard-sexualized-images-children.html
Can’t someone do something to stop Elon Musk. He tried to destroy our government and now he’s trying to destroy our children!
Money not only talks, it tyrannizes.
It’s like asking Kermit the Frog for comment instead of Jim Henson.
Thank you for this update, Parker. I hadn’t heard about it yet and it’s beyond disturbing.
Musk's role as Primary Pimp for the Plutocratic Pervocracy should surprise no one given the contextual evidence in the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn in response to death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf (As a mostly retired, near-lifelong journalist, I recognize this link should be a standard part of anti-Christonazi/anti-Regime disclosures and commentary. I am doing my best to make it so and will continue as long as I am able. But I am 85 years old and terminally ill, hence am dependent on others to pick up and carry this particular torch when I am gone.)
Partisan outrage farming. The produce is lacking any real nutritional value, but provides emotive evergy to feed Musk Derangement Syndrome which is a proxy to Trump Derangenent Syndrome which is a proxy to liberal unresolved childhood issues.
A straight question Frank won't be answering: Should there be a machine on the internet that generates pornographic images of real children on demand?
The correct answer is "no", of course, but I'm betting what we'll get from Frank is either: 1) Complete silence because he can never answer a straight question, or 2) A cloud of squid ink and misdirection and a lengthy rant about Hunter Biden's laptop.
A straight question that SteveB will not be answering: Should the Internet be open to adults grooming children to submit themselves to the trans ideology medical industrial complex to get their hormonal development corrupted and their genitals mutilated before they have enough frontal lobe development and real life experience required to make good life choices?
Oh, look, the Frankbot went with Option #2, the Ol' Whatabout. So predictable.
It's wild, isn't it? Any normal person could simply say, "Yes, it's wrong to have a machine on the internet that turns little girls school pictures into pornography." But Frank CAN'T say that, because then he'd be agreeing with US.
Never forget the basic definition of Conservatism, "The opposite of what liberals believe, updated hourly."
It's wild, isn't it? Any normal person could simply say, "yes, it is wrong to encourage young children and hormonal teens to undergo hormones and surgery to change their gender," But SteveB CAN'T say that because they he'd be agreeing with MAGA and normal Americans.
Never forget the basic definition of Democratism: "The opposite of what Trump and MAGA support."
Normal people don't share your ignorant, bigoted views of trans people, you sick freak.
"Normal people" lol.