This week, like its creator Elon Musk, the Grok AI chatbot talked about race issues in South Africa on social media. It said things that people didn't ask for, claiming that white people are being treated unfairly and that there is a "genocide".

This chatbot is made by Elon Musk's company, xAI. When people on X (Musk's social media site) ask it questions, it keeps saying there is a "white genocide." Most of these questions have nothing to do with South Africa.

One of the talks was about the streaming service Max using the name HBO again. Other talks were about video games or baseball, but they quickly changed to talk about violence against white farmers in South Africa. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, often writes about these things on his X account.

电脑科学家 Jen Golbeck 对 Grok 奇怪的反应很好奇，所以她自己试了一下。她分享了一张在威斯敏斯特狗展上拍的照片，然后问：“这是真的吗？”

Grok跟 Golbeck 回复说：“关于白人被消灭的说法，大家有很多不同的意见。有些人觉得白人农民受到了特别的暴力对待。他们说，农场常常被袭击，还有人说‘杀死布尔人’这样的话，这些都可能让人变得更暴力。”

这件事又一次告诉我们，自动化和人的工作常常联系在一起。所以，即使聊天机器人用很多数据学习过，也可能会给出这样的答案。

马里兰大学的 Golbeck 教授星期四说：“真的，不管你问 Grok 什么，它都会说关于白人种族灭绝的事情。所以很清楚，有人让它总是说这些话，或者类似的话。而且它经常说错。”

Elon Musk and his company haven't said anything about Grok's answers yet. These answers were taken down later, and it seems they stopped being shared on Thursday. Also, neither xAI nor X answered our emails on Thursday.

马斯克说，像谷歌的Gemini和OpenAI的ChatGPT这样的聊天机器人有“觉醒AI”的问题。他觉得Grok可以成为更好的选择，因为它会努力寻找真正的答案。他说了这些话已经好几年了。

马斯克也说了他的对手们在人工智能系统上不够公开。但是在星期四，他没有解释原因，所以外面的人只能自己猜发生了什么。

Paul Graham, a famous investor in technology, wrote on X: "Grok sometimes says strange things about white people in South Africa. To me, it seems like a bug that appears when you update software. I hope this is not true. It would be very bad if AI that many people use is controlled and changed by someone."

It seems like Graham's post got a funny reply from Sam Altman, who is in charge of OpenAI and a rival of Musk.

奥特曼写道：“这种情况可能有很多原因。我相信xAI很快会给大家一个清楚的解释。” 以前，马斯克因为OpenAI的事情起诉了奥特曼。

Some people want Grok to explain itself. But like other chatbots, it can make up information, which is called "hallucination." So, it's hard to know if it's telling the truth or not.

Elon Musk used to work with the former president, Donald Trump. Musk often says that the government in South Africa, which is run mostly by Black people, is against white people. He has also said many times that some politicians in South Africa are "trying to get rid of white people."

This week, Elon Musk and Grok talked more about a difficult situation. It started when the government in America, which was led by Trump, said that some white people from South Africa could come to America as refugees. This was the beginning of a plan to help more Afrikaners move to America. At the same time, Trump stopped people from other countries from coming to America as refugees. Trump said that Afrikaners were in danger in their home country, but the government of South Africa strongly disagreed with this.

In many answers, Grok mentioned lyrics from an old song against apartheid. This song asked Black people to stand up against unfair treatment. Now, some people like Musk are saying it encourages violence against white people. The main words of the song are "Kill the Boer." "Boer" means white farmers.

Golbeck觉得这些回答是“写死的”，意思是虽然聊天机器人一般会给出不同的答案，但是Grok总是说几乎一样的内容。她说，现在越来越多的人用Grok和其他AI聊天机器人找答案，所以这让人很担心。

她说：“现在我们生活在一个这样的环境里，懂这些算法的人很容易改变他们告诉我们的事情。更重要的是，如果人们相信算法可以判断什么是真，什么是假，那就会变成一个大问题，我觉得这样想是不对的。”