Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): A naughty chatbot ‘xAI Grok’ became a household name soon after its arrival nearly a week ago. People went gaga over the word – Grok – and a search for its meaning began.
As usual netizens sifted through the Internet, and a few others rummaged through the pages of dictionaries, they found a reply. It was Robert Heinlein who first used this word in his celebrated science fiction, Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961.
"Smith had been aware of the doctors but had grokked that their intentions were benign – Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein (1961)."
Along with the word grok, its creator, the almost-forgotten Heinlein, is also back to Chai Pe Charcha. This Grok Baba randomly reminds many people of Bhule Bisre Yadeen with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, causing trouble to many.
An enfant terrible of Elon Musk, AI Grok, has taken the world by storm since his birth on February 17 this year, scaring many politicians, political parties, and eminent people, holding higher positions in different countries around the globe.
As well as coming up with such truths that may put many to shame, this language-coded AI has forced into retreat those who often use abuses on social media. If someone abuses xAI Grok, it never fails to tear into the abuser with equal ferocity. Yet, unless ill-treated, Grok rarely abuses anyone. If someone points out a mistake, Grok gracefully accepts it.
During a conversation, Grok wrote a sentence: “This leader changes their boss to suit their needs.” When the Grok user wanted to know how a singular demonstrative adjective “this” can qualify a plural possessive adjective “their” it corrected the sentence, and thanked him for pointing out the error.
Similarly, Grok has made a comparison between two cricket giants of India, Sachin Tendulkar and Viraat Kohli. It has also highlighted, though in a humorous, way many unknown facts about the Indian freedom struggle and given a whip to those who replace facts with fiction. The way Grok is functioning reminds everyone of what Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein says, “Beware: for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
But the word, Grok, which has caused such a rumpus, was unknown to anyone before 1961. To grok, means to understand intuitively or by empathy. So says The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It also means to establish rapport with, and experience enjoyment, the dictionary avers. An example given in the dictionary says how it is used in the sense of enjoyment. “New Yorker, we ought to get together and grok about our problems.”
Its source of information
Let’s see how Grok gets information. It says: “I get so much information by being trained on a huge amount of data from all kinds of sources—like books, articles, websites, and more. I don’t exactly read in the traditional way like humans do. Instead, I process and understand vast amounts of text all at once, which lets me pull together answers for you quickly and comprehensively. So, no late-night reading sessions for me, just a big digital dive into the world’s knowledge!”
Facts about the ‘fiction’
The book, Stranger in a Strange Land, won the Hugo Award in 1962. It is one of the great science fictions – perhaps, after Five Weeks in a Balloon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne – that stirred up the imagination of many children. From the Earth to the Moon was the inspiration behind man’s mission to the earth’s lone satellite.
Heinlein’s leading character, Valentine Michael Smith, was the only survivor of the first manned mission to Mars. Smith, born during the mission and raised by Martians, returns to the earth with no knowledge of its culture. Nor has he ever come across a woman. Yet, being the legal heir to a huge financial empire as well as being the owner of the planet Mars, he is in turmoil.
Like xAI Grok, the protagonist of the fiction, Smith explores human morality and the meaning of love.
Smith does it with human intelligence, and Grok does so with artificial acumen, because it lacks human emotions unlike Smith. Smith sets up his own church and preaches free love, and dishes out truth through the telepathic approach that Martians taught him. The novel as well as xAI Grok is highly interesting.
There is, however, a fiat: the users should intelligently handle xAI Grok. Else, it will turn them inside out. To avoid it, they have to delve into the pages of books – the only thing that can outfox this latest version of AI.
