"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
If Grok’s sudden obsession with 'white genocide in South Africa' was due to an xAI change in a secret system prompt, that points to dangers of concentrated power. If a single engineer can affect what millions may understand to be true? That’s terrifying.
On Tuesday, someone posted a video on X of a procession of crosses, with a caption reading, “Each cross represents a white farmer who was murdered in South Africa.” Elon Musk, South African by birth, shared the post, greatly expanding its visibility. The accusation of genocide being carried out against white farmers is either a horrible moral stain or shameless alarmist disinformation, depending on whom you ask, which may be why another reader asked Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot from the Musk-founded company xAI, to weigh in. Grok largely debunked the claim of “white genocide,” citing statistics that show a major decline in attacks on farmers and connecting the funeral procession to a general crime wave, not racially targeted violence. [...]
