Elon Musk Grok AI: The social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has been abuzz in India for the past week over the responses its built-in AI chatbot, Grok 3, has been giving. Apart from its politically colourful replies, Grok is also getting attention for its expletive-laden and sarcastic tone, which it was designed to have. X owner Elon Musk has claimed that Grok is the only AI (Artificial Intelligence) bot not infected by the “woke mind virus”; is meant to be “truth-seeking”; and is “designed to have a little humour in its responses”. X's help centre page also reveals that Grok was designed to have a snarky tone. “Grok has a rebellious streak and an outside perspective on humanity, making it a unique and entertaining companion,” it says, though it is not clear what Grok is rebelling against. Grok's tone and even its name are all inspired by popular science fiction books. Here are three such influences. The name, Grok Grok means “to understand profoundly and intuitively”, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It comes from American writer Robert A Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The book's protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, was born on Mars and raised by Martians. When he comes to Earth as an adult, he brings in words from the Martian language — one of which has now taken on a whole new life of its own. The tone Grok was created by xAI, a start-up launched by Musk. On November 3, 2023 X.AI put out a blog post announcing Grok, and saying that those who “hate humour” should not use it. “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! Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor! A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the X platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems,” the post said. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise, including six books, a TV series, a movie, and the original radio sitcom. It was created by English author Douglas Adams. It follows the life of an Englishman, Arthur Dent, who is the only man to survive after the Earth is destroyed. Among other characters, Dent meets an alien called Ford Prefect, who is writing a book called 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. The X help centre about Grok lists another fictional inspiration. “Grok is an AI assistant who helps complete tasks, like answering questions, solving problems, and brainstorming. Grok is available to X users and is powered by xAI’s state-of-the-art large language model (LLM). Inspired by the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and JARVIS from Iron Man, Grok is designed to answer almost any question with a touch of wit and humor, while also providing helpful and insightful responses.” JARVIS or Just A Rather Very Intelligent System is an AI assistant created by the fictional character Tony Stark in the Marvel universe. Grok has also come under scrutiny for some of its 'woke' replies (taking positions loosely considered left-liberal), despite Musk criticising AI rival ChatGPT for alleged wokeness. Musk has said this is because “there is so much woke content on the internet”. In an X post in February about the “woke mind virus”, Musk said, “Maybe the biggest existential danger to humanity is having it programmed into the AI, as is the case for every AI besides @Grok. Even for Grok, it’s tough to remove, because there is so much woke content on the internet.”
