I could be completely off, as my intuition here is fully based on public research papers, but it seems to explain the current state of things fairly well.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46881568

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46879151

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[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/units/

So yeah, I'll gladly trust and cheer on the part working in the right direction.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073033

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# Comments: 98

> This suggests that Grok may have a weird sense of identity—if asked for its own opinions it turns to search to find previous indications of opinions expressed by itself or by its ultimate owner. I think there is a good chance this behavior is unintended!

I'd say it's far more likely that:

1. Elon ordered his research scientists to "fix it" – make it agree with him

2. They did RL (probably just basic tool use training) to encourage checking for Elon's opinions

3. They did not update the UI (for whatever reason – most likely just because research scientists aren't responsible for front-end, so they forgot)

4. Elon is likely now upset that this is shown so obviously

The key difference is that I think it's incredibly unlikely that this is emergent behavior due to an "sense of identity", as opposed to direct efforts of the xAI research team. It's likely also a case of https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anticipatory_obedience.

His company has also been caught adding specific instructions in this vein to its prompt.

And now it's searching for his tweets to guide its answers on political questions, and Simon somehow thinks it could be unintended, emergent behavior? Even if it were, calling this unintended would be completely ignoring higher order system dynamics (a behavior is still intended if models are rejected until one is found that implements the behavior) and the possibility of reinforcement learning to add this behavior.

So we know that at least the people who claim to see nothing act differently. Could it just be that people who act differently describe the sensation differently, you might ask?

No, because there are actual cases of acquired aphantasia after neurological damage. These people used to belong to the group that claimed to be able to imagine visual images, got sick, then sought medical help when they could no longer visualize. For me, at least, that's pretty cut and dry evidence that it's not just differing descriptions of the same (or similar) sensations.

This is part of the classic debate around aphantasia – both sides assume the other side is speaking more metaphorically, while they're speaking literally. E.g., "Surely he doesn't mean he literally can't visualize things, he just means it's not as sharp for him." or "Surely they don't literally mean they can see it, they're just imagining the list of details/attributes and pretending to see it."