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Grokipedia Launched: Elon Musk's AI alternative to Wikipedia

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Wikipedia has long been the go-to source for information on a vast array of topics. Every search engine crawls its pages to provide users with quick access to knowledge. Millions of people around the world visit Wikipedia daily to learn about history, science, culture, and more. Wikipedia’s open-editing model allows anyone to contribute, making it a double-edged sword, as it can lead to inaccuracies.

Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, he has been actively involved in various AI ventures like xAI and Grok. Grok is an AI chatbot like ChatGPT and it’s integrated into X (formerly Twitter) to enhance user interactions. This week Elon Musk announced the launch of Grokipedia 0.1, an early version of an AI-powered knowledge base designed to serve as an alternative to Wikipedia.

What is Grokipedia?
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Grokipedia is an AI-powered online encyclopedia developed by xAI. xAI is an artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk rivalling OpenAI. The goal of Grokipedia as stated by Musk is to provide a “massive improvement” by focusing on truth-seeking, critical thinking, and reducing what Musk and xAI describe as propaganda or biases in traditional sources. Grokipedia features around 885,000 to 900,000 articles as of now. Many of these articles are AI-generated or edited using xAI’s Grok language model, drawing content from Wikipedia itself under its Creative Commons license.

Grokipedia’s Key features include real-time fact-checking by AI, user-driven corrections, and the ability to surface obscure or lesser known information. Users can access Grokipedia through grokipedia.com and login using their X (Twitter) credentials.

If you search for a topic on Grokipedia, you can see the articles are structured very similarly to Wikipedia, with sections for references, external links, and citations. But Grokipedia only has around 800,000 to 900,000 articles so far compared to Wikipedia’s 7 million articles in English alone.

Elon Musk on Grokipedia

Issues with Wikipedia
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Grokipedia positions itself as an alternative to Wikipedia with the primary goal of addressing what its creators perceive as systemic flaws in Wikipedia’s content and editorial processes. Some of the issues included:

  1. Ideological Bias: Wikipedia is accused of having a “left-biased” or “systemic ideological bias,” particularly in coverage of political, cultural, and controversial topics, where left-wing activists allegedly dominate editing and suppress opposing viewpoints.
  2. Inaccuracies, and Propaganda: Wikipedia reportedly contains longstanding errors, half-truths, omissions, and propaganda. Grokipedia aims to purge these issues by AI-rewriting articles to correct inaccuracies and present a more balanced view.
  3. Lack of Neutrality in AI Training Data: Wikipedia is a major source of training data for AI models. If Wikipedia’s content is biased, it can lead to biased AI outputs. Grokipedia is designed as an open-source knowledge repository with no usage limits, aiming to provide a “truth baseline” that could influence search engines and future AI training.
  4. Editorial Manipulation: Wikipedia’s open-editing model allows anyone to edit articles. This can lead to manipulation by interest groups, activists, or individuals pushing specific agendas. Grokipedia counters this with AI-generated content, embedded critical thinking, and features like a “Big Diff List” to highlight manipulated pages.

While anyone can search and read Grokipedia articles, it’s unclear if users can edit articles directly like on Wikipedia. Users do not appear to have the ability to send feedback or suggest edits at this time.

Reactions to Grokipedia
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The launch of Grokipedia has sparked a range of reactions from the public and experts in the field. Some view it as a promising step towards improving the quality and reliability of online information, while others express concerns about the potential for AI-generated content to introduce new biases or inaccuracies.

Many users and experts praise Grokipedia for its focus on neutrality, AI-powered fact-checking, and potential to correct Wikipedia’s alleged left-leaning biases. Some users appreciate the open-source, no-usage-limit approach, potentially stealing traffic from Wikipedia. Elon Musk has promised its 1.0 version will be a “10x improvement” over the current version.

If you follow Elon Musk’s X account, you may have noticed his posts lean towards controversial topics, criticizing mainstream media and established institutions. This has led to skepticism about Grokipedia’s objectivity, with some fearing it may reflect Musk’s personal biases. Elon Musk has also announced that Grokipedia will be continuously updated. He wrote on X, “As Grok improves, so will Grokipedia. We are embedding the principles of critical thinking and cogency into Grok.”

As mentioned earlier, Grokipedia is still in its early stages (version 0.1) and has a long way to go before it can rival Wikipedia’s extensive content and user base. As Grokipedia evolves, we will update this article with its progress and any significant developments.