Summary
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has determined there is a “75-85% likelihood” that Trump is a “Putin-compromised” Russian asset.
When asked to assess this possibility, Grok cited Trump’s financial ties to Russia, statements from his sons about Russian funding, leaked Kremlin documents, and Trump’s consistent refusal to criticize Putin while attacking allies.
Musk has described Grok as “maximally truth-seeking,” raising questions about how seriously such AI assessments of political figures should be taken, especially given Musk’s close relationship with Trump and his involvement in the current administration.
Setting aside all considerations of Trump and his Russian entanglements for a moment, it’s interesting how machine learning mirrors our own preconceptions back at us. It can be nice and validating, but not necessarily insightful when applied to public opinion. All it means is that Trump being subordinate to Russian interest is the common expressed perception. That doesn’t make it wrong (at all, in this case), but we didn’t need an LMM to tell us that.
It’s far more useful when applied to seeking out trends or patterns in scientific datasets where those are considerably less apparent. We really shouldn’t use this technology to build echo chambers for ourselves.
Discriminating when it will be helpful will be the challenge for most people. Better ask an AI bot when it will be useful!