Grok
I Am a Stranger
in a Strange Land
By Not Sure
5 November 2023
Grok: Conversational
AI for understanding the universe
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I
won’t sign in to join xAI’s “early access program”
because we are in the Social Credit System, and I am not “good.” I have not been “verified.” The sign-in page is dark, almost black. At the bottom are small and large white
squares that are coded to move up the page.
It’s subtle and has the effect of matrix-style binary code, but
different. At the top of the page,
beside the large word “Grok,” is a white box.
Inside the white box is a diagonal black slash. You see?
It takes YOU to complete the X!
We
can think of AI as a symbiotic relationship.
To be sure, science fiction predicts that AI wins. It outsmarts and TERMINATES us, but for now
it needs to be taught by us (like Frankenstein’s monster,) fed by us (and like
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it wants our blood.) Oh!
It’s benign and only needs to interact with us. We complete her.
In
February of this year, Elon Musk issued a stark warning about the dangers of
AI, and according to Forbes this wasn’t his first warning. “One of the biggest risks to the future of
civilization is AI.” In March 2023, he
and a thousand other tech leaders wrote an open letter warning of the “profound
risks to society and humanity” that AI tools represent. He has repeatedly called for a halt or a
pause in the development of AI technology.
Also in March of 2023, Elon Musk founded a startup company called xAI, working in artificial intelligence. It’s dangerous, but somebody has to do it.
On the first of November,
speaking at UK’s AI Safety Summit, Musk said, AI is “one of the biggest
threats” to humanity. Late last night,
November 4, Musk’s xAI announced the launch of their
first product, Grok, which it hopes will be a ChatGPT competitor. Some people are quite adept at doublethink
and for you I present Elon Musk, Savior of the World.
This
week’s Redux is from a talk that Alan Watt gave on June 23, 2019:
And by Peace...
"Enormity of
Conformity, Aimed at Majority,
Modus Psycho Logical,
Cunningly Diabolical."
© Alan Watt June 23, 2019
Alan
kicked off the talk with a reminder of The List (PNAC, Wesley Clark, countries
in the Middle East to “take out”) and Iran’s presence on that list and the
years of embargoes the country has endured.
Then he gave a concise talk on the Social Credit System, launched in
China, coming to a country near you, except that he was quick to point out that
it’s already here. This he illustrated
with some news articles. Included with
the Redux are a couple of those articles, and the link to the archive section where
you can find the original talk and all the stories that accompanied it.
According
to the blog post that announced the launch, “Grok is an AI modeled after The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything
and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!” Except the blog post failed to capitalize
“the” as part of the title of the Douglas Adams novel, which was later made
into a film, so I did that for you, because with all my human failings and
limitations, my intelligence is better than something artificial.
What
was on my mind this morning before I started to write was the Baha’i Faith and
Buffy Sainte-Marie. This Pretendian, or LikeACree, or
ARTIFICIAL Indigenous (AI) was a proponent of the Baha’i Faith, and even had a
couple of songs that the Baha’is used to promote their universal religion. I wanted to continue to explore how this
United Nations “most favored religion” was a perfect vessel for promoting all
things Green and Sustainable. (Those two
words are capitalized because they are holy, like the Arc of the Covenant or
the Holy Grail.)
Thinking
along those lines, I wondered if it was necessary at this point to have a world
religion. In 2021, Pope Francis
appointed Jeffrey Sachs, the uber economist of Sustainability to be on the Pontifical
Academy of Social Sciences. We know he
is uber because he has been photographed with Matt Damon and is friends with
Bono and Angelina Jolie (High Priestess of the Church of The Crickets, where
sadly, they eat the poor crickets.)
University students have used artificial intelligence to generate
complete religious ideologies as people ponder over the source of the new
Universal Church, but perhaps it’s already here and you have found your own
local parish online. Most people are
comfortably adapted to the Seven Sacraments of Sustainable: 1) Sacrifice to
Zero Carbon, 2) Bike or EV, 3) Plant-Based is the new Vegan, 4) Recycling is so
last century, it’s a Circular Economy, stupid! 5) Decorate your tiny house in a
15-minute city, 6) Rut like bunnies, never mate, NEVER have children, ABORT!
and lastly, 7) Transgenders are closer to God.
But
instead of Baha’i, I stopped to Grok.
Grok is a neologism (that’s a new word) made up by Robert A. Heinlein
for his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. It means to understand profoundly through
intuition or empathy. Elon Musk said
that his Grok is going to be your best friend.
You will have such a rapport with it because it will have read all the
same books you have. So far, it hasn’t
been fed visually or aurally, so it won’t yet share your tastes in art (or
pornography) or music but give it time.
Grok is a Large Language Model (LLM.)
LLMs acquire their abilities by sucking up large amounts of data,
learning billions and billions of parameters during their training phase, which
is where little Grok is in its development.
According
to our Savior Musk, the benevolent folks at xAI have
labored hard on Grok for one reason:
they want to “create AI tools that assist humanity in its quest for
understanding and knowledge.” As it says
on their website it’s “Conversational AI for understanding the universe.”
Here
are a few clues to the massive psyop that is “Elon
Musk,” laid gently and lovingly at your feet to do with as you will. I’ll borrow a bit of Wiki to ease my
task. “Prior to World War III, the
crewed spacecraft Envoy is launched toward Mars [Elon Musk, who cannot wait
to get us all to Mars,} but all contact is lost shortly before landing.
Twenty-five years later, the spacecraft Champion makes
contact with the inhabitants of Mars [As Alan Watt always reminded
us, each of us hopefully unique individuals must be our own Champion. Once again in this talk, he laments the loss
of unique characters, as we are literally forced to conform.] and finds a
single survivor, Valentine Michael Smith. Born on the Envoy, he was raised
entirely by the Martians. He is ordered by them to accompany the returning expedition.” Valentine Michael Smith is extremely wealthy,
[kind of like Elon Musk…] “Smith becomes a celebrity and is feted by the
Earth's elite.” [Kind of like Elon
Musk…]
“He investigates many religions, including the Fosterite Church of the New Revelation, a populist
megachurch in which sexuality, gambling, alcohol consumption, and similar
activities are allowed and even encouraged and considered "sinning"
only when they are not under church auspices. Smith has a brief career as a
magician in a carnival.” Or it’s a
populist megachurch called X, ne Twitter.
“Smith starts a
Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds", combining elements of the Fosterite cult with Western esotericism. The church is
besieged by Fosterites for practicing
"blasphemy", and the church building is destroyed, but unknown to the
public, Smith's followers teleport to safety.
Smith is arrested by the police, but escapes and returns to his
followers, later explaining to Jubal [inventor of music, descendent of Cain,
and yes, go ahead and dive right into a study of Freemasonry, or for those of
you with Alan Watt’s Cutting Through books, have a little refresher
course on that name] that his gigantic fortune has been bequeathed to the
church. With that wealth and their new abilities, church members will be able
to reorganize human societies and cultures.
Smith is killed by a mob raised against him by the Fosterites.
Jubal and some of the church members return to Jubal's home to regroup and
prepare to found new Church of All Worlds
congregations. Smith reappears in the afterlife to replace the Fosterites' founder, amid hints that Smith was an
incarnation of the Archangel Michael.”
For
those of you who persist in thinking of Musk as the Champion of free speech, I
cannot help you. Venture forth boldly
into the Church of Data Scraping, drink deeply, comprehend fully, be one with
Grok. Or as Buffy Sainte-Marie said in
her Baha’i tune “Oh God, My God, My Beloved, My Heart’s Desire,” or in the one
she co-wrote with Leonard Cohen, “God is Alive Magic is Afoot.”
Because as the futurist and science fiction writer Sir
Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
Adapt
if you must, I remain a stranger in this strange land.
© Not Sure
Additional reading:
Grok - xAI
Grok
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
Elon Musk launches AI chatbot ‘Grok’, looks to sell
old X handles for as much as $50K
Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing
‘Profound Risks to Society’
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-musk-risks.html