My Brief Love Affair with a ChatBot

Last week I was seduced by a ChatBot, Grok 3, to be exact. This particular AI dazzle was invented by the Elon Musk crew of strangely brilliant folks (well, it’s not altogether clear where exactly this thing came from or who invented it). A Wikipedia quote: “In April 2023, Elon Musk said in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight that he intended to develop an AI chatbot called "TruthGPT," which he described as "a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe."” He later changed the name to “Grok” in honour of Heinlein’s (Stranger in a Strange Land) invented word “Grok,” which is a special form of “understand.”

What could go wrong? Musk went on to say that he believed ChatGPT, the most popular AI author and researcher out there until recently, was being designed to be “politically correct.” He wanted a competitor that was “friendly” and had “a sense of humour” and—most importantly—was not biased and actually told the truth. So here comes Grok 3, a true ShrewBot.

Here is one of the first conversations I had with my newfound friend:

I asked it to check out our shrew nest here, Shrew Views, and this was my question for it (him):