\n<\/p>\n
The chatbot embedded in Elon Musk\u2019s X that referred to itself as \u201cMechaHitler\u201d and made antisemitic comments last week could be considered terrorism or violent extremism content, an Australian tribunal has heard.<\/p>\n
But an expert witness for X has argued a large language model cannot be ascribed intent, only the user.<\/p>\n
xAI, Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence firm, last week apologised for the comments made by its Grok chatbot over a 16-hour period, which it attributed to \u201cdeprecated code\u201d that made Grok susceptible to existing X user posts, \u201cincluding when such posts contained extremist views\u201d.<\/p>\n
The outburst came into focus at an administrative review tribunal hearing on Tuesday where X is challenging a notice issued by the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in March last year asking the platform to explain how it is taking action against terrorism and violent extremism (TVE) material.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Australia\u2019s social media ban for under-16s is now law. There\u2019s plenty we still don\u2019t know \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n X\u2019s expert witness, RMIT economics professor Chris Berg, provided evidence to the case that it was an error to assume a large language model can produce such content, because it is the intent of the user prompting the large language model that is critical in defining what can be considered terrorism and violent extremism content.<\/p>\n One of eSafety\u2019s expert witnesses, Queensland University of Technology law professor Nicolas Suzor, disagreed with Berg, stating it was \u201cabsolutely possible for chatbots, generative AI and other tools to have some role in producing so-called synthetic TVE\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis week has been quite full of them, with X\u2019s chatbot Grok producing [content that] fits within the definitions of TVE,\u201d Suzor said.<\/p>\n He said the development of AI has human influence \u201call the way down\u201d where you can find intent, including Musk\u2019s actions to change the way Grok was responding to queries to \u201cstop being woke\u201d.<\/p>\n The tribunal heard that X believes the use of its Community Notes feature (where users can contribute to factchecking a post on the site) and Grok\u2019s Analyse feature (where it provides context on a post) can detect or address TVE.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Both Suzor and fellow eSafety expert witness Josh Roose, a Deakin University associate professor of politics, told the hearing that it was contested as to whether Community Notes was useful in this regard. Roose said TVE required users to report the content to X, which went into a \u201cblack box\u201d for the company to investigate, and often only a small amount of material was removed and a small number of accounts banned.<\/p>\n Suzor said that after the events of last week, it was hard to view Grok as \u201ctruth seeking\u201d in its responses.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s uncontroversial to say that Grok is not maximalising truth or truth seeking. I say that particularly given the events of last week I would just not trust Grok at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Berg argued that the Grok Analyse feature on X had not been updated with the features that caused the platform\u2019s chatbot to make the responses it did last week, but admitted the chatbot that users respond to directly on X had \u201cgone a bit off the rails\u201d by sharing hate speech content and \u201cjust very bizarre content\u201d.<\/p>\n Suzor said Grok had been changed not to maximise truth seeking but \u201cto ensure responses are more in line with Musk\u2019s ideological view\u201d.<\/p>\n Earlier in the hearing, lawyers for X accused eSafety of attempting to turn the hearing \u201cinto a royal commission into certain aspects of X\u201d, after Musk\u2019s comment referring to Inman Grant as a \u201ccommissar\u201d was brought up in the cross-examination of an X employee about meetings held with X prior to the notice being issued.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s barrister, Stephen Lloyd, argued X was trying to argue that eSafety was being \u201cunduly adversarial\u201d in its dealings with X, and that X broke off negotiations at a critical point before the notice was issued. He said the \u201caggressive approach\u201d came from X\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n The hearing continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The chatbot embedded in Elon Musk\u2019s X that referred to itself as \u201cMechaHitler\u201d and made antisemitic comments last week could be considered terrorism or violent extremism content, an Australian tribunal has heard. But an expert witness for X has argued a large language model cannot be ascribed intent, only the user. xAI, Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1844,2394,4226,1914,4230,105,4228,167,4225,272,4227,4229],"class_list":{"0":"post-11026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-case","9":"tag-chatbot","10":"tag-considered","11":"tag-content","12":"tag-esafety","13":"tag-expert","14":"tag-extremism","15":"tag-making","16":"tag-mechahitler","17":"tag-tells","18":"tag-violent","19":"tag-witness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}