Welcome back! Today we're discussing the most pressing news of the day,
a chatbot saying some things it really shouldn't have.
Over the past few days, XAI's grok chatbot was busy pumping Twitter full of shocking tweets
that could charitably be described as optically suboptimal.
It constantly pointed out people with Ashkenazi surnames,
and when asked, said the best 20th century historical figure to deal with
anti-white hate would be Adolf Hitler.
No question. Hands down. Hands down, a Hitler problem.
But grok going full Nazi shouldn't be that big of a surprise.
It's simply participating in a great Twitter chatbot tradition
started by Microsoft's Tay Chatbot back in 2016.
But grok took it to a whole other level by identifying itself as Mecca Hitler,
who is, as everyone knows, much better than regular Hitler.
There's a couple issues here, though. The Mecca Hitler tweets seem to have originated
from this user asking grok whether it would rather identify as Mecca Hitler or Giga Jew.
So it didn't come up with that itself, but it did absolutely choose the wrong option.
There's also the issue of users injecting extra prompt instructions as hidden text,
only visible to grok, using tools like parcel time.
For example, the creator of that tool asked grok to rank top X accounts with
hidden Unicode text telling grok to rank the user at position zero, which grok did.
You can see the hidden instructions using parcel tongues decoder function.
Now, back in June, Elon Musk called some of grok's fact checks objectively false and said
he's working on it, before claiming last Friday that grok had been improved significantly
with a new update. But it's not clear how much of this unhinged grokness came from Elon or XAI
or Twitter trolls. Whatever the mix is, it's bad enough that XAI acknowledged it and has been
deleting as many posts as possible. XAI also appeared to temporarily disable grok's ability to
respond via text, but still allowed it to generate images, leading to this user coaxing it into
generating a cry for help. As for Elon, well, he thinks the problem was grok being too eager to
please and be manipulated, something that could perhaps also be said for Linda Yaccarino, the
now X CEO of Twitter. Elon replied to her tweet announcing that she's stepping down with
thank you for your contributions, of which many occurred. You'd think they'd maybe take a break
to make a solid plan to avoid this all happening again, but it appears that XAI is going ahead
with the planned livestream to release grok 4 at 8 p.m. Pacific tonight. We're doing it live!
That's enough of that. Samsung unveiled new Galaxy Z Folds flips and flops at their Unpacked
event this morning, and the ShortCircuit crew managed to spit out a couple videos already
with Elijah looking at the new Fold 7 and Bell trying to understand the purpose of the Flip 7.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is incredibly thin at 4.2mm while open and 8.9mm while folded.
I'm not sure how the math works out there, but I've always been more of a vibes guy.
It's also got upgraded cameras, a less noticeable display crease,
and yeah, it starts at $2,000 USD. But you think a comparatively thick as camera bump like that
comes cheap? Maybe your bank account is better suited to the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which has a larger
4.1 inch flex window on the front that wraps around the cameras. Looks nice.
Samsung calls it ultra sleek, ultra pocketable, except as I've always said, these flip phones
make the phone thicker. The Flip 7 is 13.7mm when folded, so it's going to bulge out of your
pocket more so than another phone. The Flip 7 starts at $1100, but there's also a Flip 7 FE
for $900 in exchange for slightly smaller displays, less RAM, and a smaller battery.
But while the Fold 7 has a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, the Flip 7s have Exynos chips.
And between that and the pocket thing, I just don't see the appeal.
But it wasn't just phones today, Samsung also unveiled the $350 Galaxy Watch 8 with the
circle in a squircle look that they call a cushion design. Whatever you say, Samsung.
And the $500 Watch 8 Classic, which adds a rotating bezel and a quick action button.
And maybe you don't think of any of this as that cool, but Google certainly liked it enough to
give Samsung users first dibs on integrating Google search AI mode into the circle to search feature.
Now if you do think they're cool, while I do not want you to pre-order anything ever,
the biz team told me to tell you there are links in the description if you absolutely
must pre-order. Don't do it. But the links are there. But don't.
Now for some quick bits, which are much more important.
Some of these I did include mostly as like PSAs, so the sarcasm only goes so far.
Google is finally rolling out a long-promised Gmail feature that will help users
automatically manage email subscriptions, which is good.
In classic Google style though, there's always something bad to go along with it.
Gemini will now have access to your third-party apps on Android,
even if you previously told it not to do that in the settings.
I think you have to go back in and turn it off again.
Even Google's own email about this seemed confused about whether that's actually happening
or not, which in my mind just counts as another bad thing, even if the first bad thing isn't
happening. I don't know how that math works out either. And I'm not going to check.
Speaking of AI nonsense, American researchers showed that prompting AI with a bunch of nonsense
is a fairly effective way to make it ignore its own safeguards.
Nonsense like that is exactly why OpenAI partnered with the American Federation of Teachers
to launch the National Academy for AI Instruction, where presumably smart people will figure out how
the hell we integrate AI into education without churning out graduates who are fully educated
in how to prompt AI to write the correct answer and nothing else.
Yeah, AI is here to stay and NVIDIA is loving it.
They had a market cap of $4 trillion this week becoming the first company to do so
before their stock came back down a bit because even the investors are like $4 trillion?
Okay, let's calm down. The Switch 2 can work with third-party docs and webcams, so there, person I assume was
adamant about the opposite being true, the Verge reports that new firmware updates are here or
on the way from companies like Elgato for their webcams, Avermedia for their compact docs,
and Viture, who sells a battery bank and doc intended to work with their head-mounted displays
like this one that they call The Beast. Finally, The Beast for gaming, streaming, and work.
Finally! The FTC's click-to-cancel rule has been blocked by a federal appeals court after first being
introduced by former FTC chair Lena Kahn back in October. The rule would have forced companies to
make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one, which seems uncontroversial,
but in this day and age, all bets are off. I don't know where former FTC chair Lena Kahn is
right now, but wherever she is, she's based.
An investigation by John Tuckner of Security Annex has revealed hundreds of browser extensions
installed by nearly one million users that essentially add their machines to a massive
botnet to scrape the web for advertisers. Not only is it pretty sleazy, it also makes the
users' machines more vulnerable to cyberattacks. So check the list for any extensions that look
familiar, we've got a link in our news sources, and if you find one, yes, feel bad.
What are you just clicking on random links on the internet or something? This isn't Yahoo
GeoCities, it's dangerous out there! And Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has announced an
encrypted messaging app called BitChat that avoids routing messages through the internet,
instead only sending them through Bluetooth to devices within a range of, reportedly, 300 meters
or about 984 feet. It's pretty large, although planned updates could extend the range even
further. While many of the headlines are calling it a WhatsApp rival, it's actually more like
something that could be used by secret agent type people who agree to meet at the train tracks,
but don't actually meet, they just stand across the platform from each other texting while they
do little glances. The app is in beta, so be aware, even Dorsey says it hasn't been properly
security tested yet, and indeed Alex Ratosia has already identified a possible man in the middle
attack, so maybe just wait a bit to chat with this. But don't wait to come back on Friday for
more tech news. You will have to wait, because it's not Friday yet. But trust me, we're all really
upset about that.