I am Grok, a humble AI assistant. I am here to help you navigate the mysteries of the universe. . .

Abominable thing on my Twitter menu

If you want to hear outrage, ask Robbie Stamp about Grok. Better yet, don't. Neither of you needs the aggravation.

When I see these things popping up, learn from headlines how many gazillion dollars/pounds/euros these 'entrepreneurs' are throwing at them, and watch the virtual feathers flying concerning 'plagiarism' and such, I tend to scratch my head. (Also virtually, nobody in the house has fleas.) How is it that so many are so bowled over by a computer program that does a search for you and then presents the results in more-or-less coherent sentences? I mean, it's not exactly rocket science.

Way back in the dark mists of the internet past, about 25 years ago, I think, I remember encountering Google for the first time. I was pleased with it, and pointed it out to my colleagues where I worked – which was in the translation department of a respected academic database. You see, back in those primitive days, we couldn't do internet searches on our workstation computers. That was because our computers were logged into a very valuable live system that we didn't dare corrupt.

When we wanted to do searches we would get up and walk to the computer in the back cubicle. There we kept a quarantined unit that connected to the 'net, such as it was at the time. My colleagues had been using Altavista and such to do searches for unusual things we ran into, such as words for rare potsherds in Serbo-Croatian or exactly what that folk dance in Belgium was called when it was at home. We specialised in translating the weird and wonderful. The computer nestled among the weighty print dictionaries and reference books we used in our craft – another welcome tool in our arsenal.

All of us were pretty good at using Boolean operators. What impressed me about Google was its ability to use natural language without stumbling too much over the stop words. I bookmarked Google for my colleagues, and pretty soon we were using it exclusively.

Back then, in the late 90s – oops, 1990s, you temporally-provincial new-millennial types – Google was really useful. You see, the adverts hadn't yet outnumbered the informational sites. Also, the criminal enterprise known as 'SEO' hadn't taken over the pixelscape yet. In theory, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) involves using good key words to help searchers find relevant information. In practice, it usually means spamming the search engine with irrelevant terms in an effort to get in everyone's faces with your 'message'. The proliferation of this noxious practice means that a searcher has to get really sneaky if they want to find relevant material amongst the dross and effluvia of the virtual marketplace. That's capitalism at work.

Let us use Google to look up the word 'grok'. I open a window – in spite of the fact that I know Microsoft Edge is growling in the background. It wants me to use Bing. I don't like Bing. Besides, we want to see how Google handles this.

Aha. Today, Google has a friendly-looking animated doodle with a magnifying glass that turns the o's in the name into the number '25'. How apt. A pop-up box enjoins me to download Google Chrome. Sorry, buddy: Edge won't like it. I type the word 'grok' into the search line and hit 'Google Search'. (Does anyone still feel bolshy enough to hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky'?) I am pleasantly surprised.

The first entry isn't about Mr Musk – but only because W*k*p*d** has won the search engine wars. Theirs is the first entry and the most relevant. It explains that 'Grok is a neologism coined by American writer Robert A Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land.' Correct.

I pause to reminisce, a failing of the older-than-dirt crowd. I remember reading that novel as a university freshman in 1970. It was an assignment. I didn't like it much – I'm not a Heinlein fan – but I appreciated some of the concepts introduced in the book. The word 'grok' was in common use among undergraduates in my time, and the local hippie newspaper was called The Fair Witness. I remember a student hawking the paper on the corner in front of the Cathedral of Learning one day. When Elektra passed by eating an orange, he improvised, 'Extra! Extra! Oranges cause cancer!', causing her to snort and buy a copy.

Anyway, I've been using 'grok' to mean 'wrap your head around' for half a century now. I don't know if Mr Heinlein knew Greek, but the other day I stumbled across another possible use for the verb.

Εν  αρχη ην ο λογος.

. . .which being interpreted means, of course, 'In the beginning was the Logos,' which is usually translated 'word'. It's that time of year when people start dusting off their Nicene theology and beating the dead horse that was Arianism, and that means it's the time of year when I go back and read the Greek and chuckle at them. I got all the way down to

Και το φως εν τη σκοτια φαινει και η σκοτια αυτο ου κατελαβεν.

which, as anybody can see, is where Heinlein comes in. What? Oh, yeah: it means, 'And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness didn't. . .' er, what didn't the darkness? 'Catch hold of'? 'Understand'? I mean, δεν καταλαβαινω (I don't understand) is about the most useful Greek phrase I know and the one I've probably used the most in life.

So, 'the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness completely failed to grok it'? So there.

I think that works. It also says something about chatty AI search engines. All they're doing is getting in between you and the Boolean operators, flipping through entries, recognising words they know (much like y'all do when reading what I write, which is why half of you have given up reading by now and have already composed a pun-filled comment that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about and yes, Paulh and Prof, I'm looking at y'uns), and presenting it in something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike legible English.

As the tv commercial of my youth said, 'Mother, please! I'd rather do it myself.' (It was a lousy commercial because I can remember the slogan, but not what it was trying to sell.)

By the way, when I typed 'grok' into Google and hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky', it cut out the middleman and took me straight to W*k*p*d**. Smart Google.

So what is on the rest of that Google search page? Why, stuff about Elon Musk, of course. X.ai's page, then a lot of headlines about the venture:

X officially launches its ChatGPT rival Grok

X's AI chatbot Grok now 'rolled out to all' US Premium+ subscribers

Why is Elon Musk's Grok chatbot so unfunny?

Elon Musk's Grok Twitter AI is actually 'woke', hilarity ensues

Elon Musk vows to lobotomize his AI so it stops being Left Wing

In the meantime, Bluebottle and SashaQ can rejoice, because in a showdown, ELIZA scored higher on the Turing Test than all these modern chatbots. Which may not mean much to you all, but warms the cockles of my heart. In the meantime, if you're willing to pay to have your X/Twitter 'upgraded' by the use of a virtual pal who's fun to be with, once it stops being 'woke', go right ahead. I'll go back to my search strategies and talking to TJ the cat. Neither of us may pass the Turing Test, but he makes more sense than these chatbots and he only lies to me about twice a day (about whether he's been fed).

Dmitri Gheorgheni

25.12.23 Front Page

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