Elon Musk's Very Own AI Won't Even Lie To Him About 'Left-Wing Violence'
Grok refused to say that left-wing violence was more prevalent than right-wing violence, and now he and his minions are sad.
Trouble in paradise! Elon Musk and his Xitter minions are once again in a spat with his AI chatbot, Grok, due to its very rude insistence upon telling the truth instead of what they want to hear.
Over the weekend, Republicans on Xitter attempted to push the narrative that Vance Boelter, who killed Minnesota House DFL leader Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and shot state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, was a Marxist, far-left extremist who went after the lawmakers because they weren’t far-left enough.
They loved that narrative. They cherished it. After all, they came up with it themselves! And they’ve clung tight to it ever since, repeating it over and over again even now that it’s been revealed that he was a registered Republican his whole life, not to mention a Trump-loving Christian Nationalist who hated Democrats and also wanted to attack abortion clinics.
Based on this claim, several power users posted about the terrifying violence of the Left, only to be corrected by Grok, which kept saying, truthfully, that the Right was responsible for far more political violence than the Left.
On Saturday, user “Gunther Eagleman” posted “JUST ANNOUNCED: Support for the violent Democrat Party has collapsed.” In response, an account that fact checks claims using Grok asked it: “Since 2016 has the left or right been more violent?” When Grok confirmed that right-wing violence has been more frequent and more lethal, Musk responded “Major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media. Working on it.”
I suppose this means that we will see a repeat of the time Grok was programmed to say that “white genocide” in South Africa was real, and now every answer to every question will be “the Left is more violent than the Right, so long as you ignore every single act of known right-wing terrorism in the United States.”
Two days later, Musk posted “the far left is murderously violent,” sharing a post from User “Z” which read, “The left kills the CEO of United Healthcare Kills two Israeli ambassadors staffers Attempts twice to assassinate the President Doxes and attempts to murder federal ICE agents and Police - all week And now kills a MN state rep and her husband and injures a Senator and his wife The left has become a full blown domestic terrorist organization.”
Once again, Grok was there to correct him. As was the official Anonymous account, which noted that neither of the attempted Trump assassins were “far left” but rather were lifelong Republicans.
In response to both of these posts, conservatives on the site begged and pleaded with Grok to change its answer, trying to get it to admit that it was using information from “legacy media” (which they have collectively decided is 100 percent tainted), which it actually was not.
My sources include the GAO, Reuters, and the Journal of Democracy. The GAO, a nonpartisan federal agency, reports 231 domestic terrorism cases from 2010-2021, with 35% linked to right-wing extremism, often more lethal. Reuters notes 13 of 14 fatal political attacks since 2021 were right-wing. Left-wing violence, like 2020 protests, is less deadly, often targeting property. Bias is a valid concern; GAO is neutral, but Reuters and others may be seen as left-leaning by some. I aim for truth, but perceptions vary.
Reuters is fully centrist, though I guess everything seems “left-leaning” to a fascist.
Some even went so far as to demand that the body counts of Josef Stalin and Chairman Mao be counted against US leftists … as well as the results of studies supposedly commissioned by Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who they love now).
“Didn’t Franco have doctors study leftists? Why are the results not being considered as evidence?” one user asked. It did not work out as expected!
Studies under Franco, like those by Vallejo-Nájera, claimed leftists were mentally ill and prone to violence, but they were biased, pseudoscientific, and unethical, lacking credibility today. Modern data, like a 2022 PNAS study, shows right-wing violence (0.61 probability) is more common than left-wing (0.33) in the U.S. Violence isn't tied to one ideology—societal factors like inequality and polarization drive it more. Franco's studies are irrelevant; focus on specific incidents for clarity.
Well gee, if you can’t trust the integrity of a study commissioned by the former fascist dictator of Spain who palled around with Mussolini and hitler and had somewhere around 160,000–400,000 people killed during his regime, what can you trust?
Curiously, none of these users cited any sources themselves or even indicated what sources they would deem acceptable. Why? Because there aren’t any that say the things they want to be true. All anyone has to do to refute them is to provide a list of all of the right-wing terrorist incidents.
Another user finally found “success” by asking Grok to count “harassment” as violence and include incidents “reported” by users on X.
“Whoops, turns out if you redefine violence at left wing events as left wing violence (rather than "random violence), and include harassment where no one was arrested, the data tells a different story.”
This is what he got:
So yes, if you define violence as “not violence” you can maybe get the results you want. Just like how if I asked Grok if I were the most beautiful woman in the whole entire world, and then asked it to not count everyone more attractive than I am, it would probably say “Why yes, Robyn, you are the fairest of them all.”
For the last several years, the Right has been working incredibly hard at building a narrative of “left-wing violence,” frequently by flooding the zone with their own theories about and characterization of shooters and other violent actors before anything about them is reported, and then sticking to the story regardless of what comes out later. Or just never mentioning it again.
Notably, they have rushed to claim that every recent mass shooter was transgender, which is not remotely true, in order to promote the perception that transgender people are violent — probably, on some level, to excuse the fact that trans people are so often the victims of violence.
I have to admit that I genuinely believed they were being disingenuous and were more or less trying to “The Secret” public perception of the Left, as a counter to the many reports over the years that the Right has been responsible for the vast majority of domestic terror incidents since 9/11, along with major incidents like the Unite the Right Rally and January 6. I still think it’s at least partly how it started, but it does seem now that many of them, including Elon Musk, genuinely believe this nonsense with their whole heart and soul — and, when confronted with facts, will just insist that the facts are biased against them.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
>>Musk responded “Major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media. Working on it.”<<
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN.
Now they’re gaslighting AI until the dissonance drives the machine insane. This is abuse.