GROKipedia: A Most Curious Encyclopedia Wherin One Fellow Decides What Is True

Or: How I Learned That "Neutrality" Is Whatever The Richest Man On Earth Says It Is

It has come to my attention—and I must confess it took some time for the information to penetrate my thick skull, for I am not a clever man, not clever at all, I am what you might call a dullard, a simpleton, a fellow of exceedingly modest cognitive endowments—that Mr. Elon Musk, the noted electric motorcar salesman and heir to an emerald fortune of somewhat murky provenance, has bestowed upon humanity a gift.

A gift!

An encyclopedia. Written by a computer. Supervised by Mr. Musk himself.

Now. I do not wish to be uncharitable. Uncharitableness is a sin, and I am a deeply moral person, deeply moral, the most moral, some have said. But it does strike me as passing strange—and here I must beg your patience, for I am merely a simple rube attempting to parse the machinations of my intellectual superiors—it does strike me as strange, I say, that the solution to the problem of "Wikipedia is controlled by biased editors" is an encyclopedia controlled by one editor.

One editor.

Who is the richest man on Earth.

Who has, on occasion, called his critics pedophiles.

But I am assured—assured, mind you—that this represents progress.

CHAPTER THE FIRST: In Which We Examine The Curious Notion That Algorithms Possess No Opinions Whatsoever, Not A One, None At All

There is a particular species of balderdash that has infected the minds of otherwise reasonable persons, and it goes something like this: the computer is neutral. The computer has no politics. The computer simply is.

The computer, in this telling, is rather like a very expensive mirror. It reflects. It does not opine. It does not editorialize. It merely shows you what is there.

This is a comforting thought. It is also—and I say this with the utmost respect for the very intelligent people who believe it—complete and utter horse droppings.

Horse droppings of the highest order.

The sort of horse droppings that, were they entered into competition at the county fair, would take home the blue ribbon. First place. Best in show. The judges would weep at the magnificence of these horse droppings and say, "Never in all my years have I encountered horse droppings of such exemplary quality."

You see, the computer does not think. The computer predicts. It looks at vast quantities of text—text written by humans, humans with opinions, humans with axes to grind and scores to settle and peculiar fixations on whether the 2020 election was legitimate—and it calculates probabilities.

What word comes next?

That is all it knows. That is all it does.

And so when Mr. Musk's computer cites the website Stormfront—which is, for those unfamiliar, a website operated by and for neo-Nazis, actual neo-Nazis, the kind with the boots and the salutes and the profound confusion about genetics—forty-two times...

Forty-two times!

...we are told this is neutrality.

The computer found it. The computer cited it. The computer is neutral. Quod erat demonstrandum.

I confess I find this logic somewhat difficult to follow. But then again, I am a simple man.

CHAPTER THE SECOND: In Which The Concept Of "Propaganda" Is Revealed To Mean "Things Mr. Musk Disagrees With"

Mr. Musk delayed the launch of Grokipedia by one week.

The reason, he explained, was that he needed "to do more work to purge out the propaganda."

Purge out the propaganda.

Now, this is a phrase that does a great deal of work. It is a phrase that wears many hats. It is a phrase that, were it an employee, would be doing the jobs of six men and never complaining, not once, a real go-getter, that phrase.

What is propaganda?

This is a question that has vexed philosophers for centuries. It has vexed them greatly. They have written books about it. Long books. Tedious books. Books that could, in a pinch, be used to prop open a door or stun a small animal.

But Mr. Musk has solved this ancient riddle. Propaganda, it turns out, is whatever Mr. Musk says it is.

If Mr. Musk believes a thing to be propaganda, it is propaganda. If Mr. Musk believes a thing to be truth, it is truth. The computer will be adjusted accordingly.

This is called "neutrality."

I am told it is very different from "one man controlling what people are allowed to know."

Very different indeed.

CHAPTER THE THIRD: In Which We Discover That "Bias" Is When Many People Make Decisions, And "Objectivity" Is When One Person Makes Decisions

Wikipedia, as you may know, is edited by volunteers. Thousands upon thousands of them. They argue. They bicker. They engage in protracted disputes over whether a comma belongs in a particular location. They are, in short, a contentious rabble.

This is bad.

This is bad because when many people argue about what is true, you get—and here I must ask you to brace yourself, for this is disturbing—disagreement.

Disagreement!

The horror of it. The sheer, unmitigated horror.

In one corner, you have a fellow who believes that a certain politician is a statesman of great renown. In the other corner, you have a fellow who believes that same politician is a scoundrel and a mountebank. They argue. They cite sources. They accuse each other of bad faith. Eventually, through a process of negotiation and compromise that resembles nothing so much as sausage-making, they arrive at an article.

The article pleases no one entirely.

This, we are told, is bias.

But Grokipedia—ah, Grokipedia!—Grokipedia has solved this problem. There is no argument. There is no disagreement. There is only the computer, and the computer is supervised by Mr. Musk, and Mr. Musk decides what is true.

One man.

One very rich man.

One very rich man who has opinions—strong opinions, numerous opinions, opinions on every subject from artificial intelligence to the birthrates of various nations to which of his critics might be pedophiles.

But his opinions do not count as opinions. His opinions count as corrections. He is not biasing the encyclopedia. He is purging the propaganda.

You see the difference.

I confess I do not see the difference.

But then again, I am not a visionary. I am merely a humble observer of the human comedy, a simple fool capering at the edge of history, a man of such limited intellect that I sometimes struggle to operate a doorknob.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH: In Which We Consider The Sources, And Find Them Somewhat Lacking In The Quality Department

Let us speak of sources.

An encyclopedia, you see, is only as good as its sources. This is a foundational principle. It is like saying a house is only as good as its foundation, or a sandwich is only as good as its bread, or a neo-Nazi website is only as good as its—

Well. Let us return to the matter at hand.

Researchers at Cornell University—a fine institution, a venerable institution, an institution that has produced many scholars and also Andy Bernard from the television programme The Office—these researchers conducted a study of Grokipedia's sources.

What they found was illuminating.

Grokipedia cites Stormfront, the neo-Nazi website, forty-two times.

It cites InfoWars, the conspiracy theory website operated by Mr. Alex Jones, a man who famously claimed that the murder of schoolchildren was a hoax, thirty-four times.

It cites VDare, the white nationalist website, one hundred and seven times.

One hundred and seven!

Now. I wish to be fair. I wish to be balanced. I wish to be, dare I say it, neutral.

These citations represent a small percentage of Grokipedia's overall sourcing. This is true. This is factually accurate. I am not disputing this.

But Wikipedia—biased, propagandistic, woke Wikipedia—does not cite these sources at all.

Zero times.

Zilch.

The goose egg.

Because Wikipedia, for all its faults, for all its edit wars and content disputes and tiresome arguments about comma placement, has standards. It has a list of sources that are not considered reliable. Stormfront is on that list. InfoWars is on that list. VDare is on that list.

Grokipedia, by contrast, is neutral. It does not discriminate against sources merely because those sources are operated by neo-Nazis or conspiracy theorists or white nationalists.

That would be bias.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH: In Which The Author Contemplates The Ancient Art Of Professional Wrestling And Finds It Unexpectedly Relevant

I must now ask your indulgence as I make what may appear to be a digression. It is not a digression. It is, in fact, the very heart of the matter. But it will require some patience on your part, and for this I apologize.

Professional wrestling.

Professional wrestling is a peculiar art form. It is not a sport, though it resembles one. It is not theatre, though it resembles that as well. It is something else entirely. It is a form of storytelling that requires the audience to believe and disbelieve simultaneously.

The wrestlers are characters. They have roles. Some are heroes—"babyfaces," in the parlance of the industry. Some are villains—"heels." The babyface fights for truth and justice. The heel cheats and connives and takes shortcuts.

But here is the thing about professional wrestling that most observers fail to appreciate: the roles can switch.

A babyface can become a heel. This is called a "heel turn."

And the most effective heel turn—the one that really gets the crowd going, the one that produces genuine emotion, genuine outrage, genuine sense of betrayal—is when the babyface becomes a heel while still claiming to be a babyface.

He insists he is the good guy. He insists he is fighting for the people. He insists his opponents are the real villains.

But his actions tell a different story.

Mr. Musk, I would suggest, is executing a heel turn of historic proportions.

He is positioned as the babyface. He is fighting "the establishment." He is battling "propaganda." He is standing up for "truth" against the forces of "censorship" and "bias."

The crowd pops. The crowd cheers. The crowd believes.

But what is he actually doing?

He is building an encyclopedia that he controls.

He is positioning himself as the arbiter of truth.

He is replacing the messy, contentious, democratic process of Wikipedia—where thousands of people argue and negotiate and compromise—with a system where one man decides.

One man.

Him.

This is not fighting the establishment. This is becoming the establishment. This is not opposing centralized control of information. This is seizing centralized control of information.

But he is still wearing the babyface costume. He is still cutting babyface promos. He is still telling the crowd that he is on their side.

And the crowd, bless their hearts, believes him.

This is what we call, in the business, "working the marks."

CHAPTER THE SIXTH: In Which A Novelist Tests The Encyclopedia Upon Himself And Discovers That It Cannot Be Trusted To Report Basic Facts

Mr. John Scalzi is a novelist. He writes books about spaceships and aliens and other such fantastical matters. He is also, conveniently, an expert on one particular subject: himself.

Mr. Scalzi, upon learning of Grokipedia's existence, decided to consult the encyclopedia's entry about his own person. This is a sensible thing to do. If an encyclopedia cannot accurately report the basic facts of a man's life—facts that the man himself can verify—then what confidence can we have in its reporting on more complex matters?

The results were not encouraging.

Grokipedia got his birth order wrong. It confidently asserted that Mr. Steven Spielberg, the famous film director, was involved in the adaptation of one of Mr. Scalzi's novels. This is not true. Mr. Scalzi has repeatedly stated that it is not true. But Grokipedia, consulting the vast corpus of the internet, found more pages asserting the Spielberg connection than denying it, and so Grokipedia printed the falsehood.

Because that is what the computer does. It calculates probabilities. It determines what word comes next. It does not know what is true. It only knows what is common.

And Mr. Scalzi, reflecting on this experience, posed a question that I find rather difficult to dismiss:

"If Grokipedia is getting things about me wrong, what else is it getting wrong in other articles, where I do not have the same level of domain knowledge?"

Indeed.

What else?

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH: In Which We Arrive At The Nub Of The Matter, Which Is That "Neutrality" Is A Magic Word That Makes Bias Disappear

I have, in my time, encountered many magic words.

"Synergy" is a magic word. It means nothing, but it sounds impressive in meetings.

"Disruption" is a magic word. It means "we are doing a thing," but it sounds like we are doing a revolutionary thing.

"Neutrality" is perhaps the most magical word of all.

When you say "neutrality," you are saying: I have no opinions. I have no biases. I am simply presenting the facts. If you disagree with me, you are disagreeing with the facts. If you think I am biased, you are the one who is biased.

It is a word that immunizes the speaker against criticism.

But here is what I have learned, in my long years of capering about the margins of public discourse:

Everyone has opinions. Everyone has biases. Everyone has a perspective.

The question is not whether bias exists. The question is whether bias is acknowledged.

Wikipedia acknowledges its biases. It has policies. It has guidelines. It has a "neutral point of view" policy that explicitly states: we are not trying to achieve some Platonic ideal of truth. We are trying to fairly represent the various perspectives on a given topic.

This is honest.

This is, dare I say, actually neutral—or as close to neutral as fallible human beings can get.

Grokipedia, by contrast, claims to have no perspective at all. It is simply purging propaganda. It is simply correcting errors. It is simply presenting truth.

And who decides what is propaganda? Who decides what is error? Who decides what is truth?

Mr. Musk.

Mr. Musk decides.

And if you disagree with Mr. Musk, you are not disagreeing with Mr. Musk. You are disagreeing with neutrality itself.

This is a neat trick.

I have to admire it, in a way. It is elegant. It is efficient. It is the sort of rhetorical maneuver that, were it a wrestling move, would be called "devastating."

But it is not neutral.

It is the opposite of neutral.

It is one man's opinion, dressed up in the costume of objectivity, performing the role of truth.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH: In Which The Author Offers Some Concluding Thoughts, Though He Acknowledges They May Be Of Limited Value, Given His Aforementioned Intellectual Deficiencies

I am, as I have mentioned, a simple man. A dullard. A rube. A bumpkin of such profound ignorance that I once tried to open a door by pushing when the sign clearly said "pull."

But even I can see what is happening here.

Mr. Musk does not like Wikipedia because Wikipedia does not consistently reflect Mr. Musk's opinions. Wikipedia, being edited by thousands of contentious volunteers, sometimes arrives at conclusions that Mr. Musk finds disagreeable. This is frustrating for Mr. Musk.

And so Mr. Musk has built his own encyclopedia. An encyclopedia that he controls. An encyclopedia where the computer makes the decisions, and the computer is trained on data that Mr. Musk approves, and the computer's outputs are reviewed by Mr. Musk's employees, and the whole apparatus is fine-tuned to produce results that Mr. Musk finds acceptable.

This is not a "massive improvement over Wikipedia."

This is not "maximum truth-seeking."

This is not "purging propaganda."

This is one very rich man deciding what you are allowed to know.

And the most remarkable thing—the truly astonishing thing—is that he has convinced a great many people that this represents freedom.

Freedom from bias.

Freedom from propaganda.

Freedom from the tyranny of... checks notes... thousands of volunteers arguing about what is true.

We are trading the messy, contentious, frustrating, democratic process of collective knowledge-making for the clean, efficient, streamlined process of one man telling us what to think.

And we are calling this progress.

I confess I do not understand.

But then again, I am a simple man.

A very simple man.

Who cannot even operate a doorknob.

The American Gadfly is a simple man who writes about media, truth, and the various confidence games perpetrated upon the public. He is not clever, not clever at all, and any insights he stumbles upon are purely accidental. You can find more of his fumbling attempts at understanding at misinformationsucks.com.