For 24 years, Wikipedia has relied on fallible humans to write about everything there is to know about anything. Grokipedia, created by Elon Musk’s xAI, is finally set to challenge that.
Supporters of Grokipedia say it’s the best thing that’s come out on the internet since… well, Wikipedia. However, Musk’s critics argue his new encyclopedia is nowhere near as neutral as it claims and is pushing “right-wing” talking points.
But maybe they’re both right.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia idea was born just a month ago
It was only at the end of September when Elon Musk announced xAI was building Grokipedia, claiming it would be a “massive improvement over Wikipedia,” and address “falsehoods” and “half-truths” on the internet.
It’s v0.1, released on Monday as an “early beta,” and saw huge praise from his supporters on X, with many praising what they see as Grokipedia’s clinical approach to politically charged topics, such as Charlie Kirk, George Floyd, and even Bitcoin.
Grokipedia has only 885,279 articles at launch, and most searches yield empty results. It is also yet to benefit from extensive user edits to fix errors or hallucinations — though that functionality is built in.
Wikipedia vs Grokipedia on crypto
Wikipedia’s dismissive treatment of Bitcoin is particularly illuminating when compared with Musk’s version, which many attribute to the influence of professional crypto skeptic David Gerard, who was a senior administrator and editor at Wikipedia from 2004 until this year.
Ironically, the part of his Wikipedia entry that indicates he stepped down this year says “citation needed,” but if true, it may be related to recent publicity around his controversial approach to editing.
Read more: Crypto critic David Gerard — Can FUD ever be useful?
Like most entries on cryptocurrency on Wikipedia, the Bitcoin entry has been under various forms of editing “protection” for more than a decade and has been designated a “contentious topic” under “active community sanctions”.
This effectively limits editing of the article and only allows a small subset of powerful editors and administrators to change the content. This helps explain why the crypto content takes a fairly negative approach to the topic and overlooks many key details and developments.
Cryptocurrency publications are not considered “reliable sources” by Wikipedia, either, meaning the content is often sourced from mainstream journalists who have a limited understanding of the topic.
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In Wikipedia’s entry on Bitcoin, the introduction highlights Bitcoin’s “use by criminals,” which is again emphasized in the payments section, which claims Bitcoin is rarely used in regular transactions but is popular for criminal activities.
It quotes crypto-hating economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth Rogoff to support this argument, and again quotes them describing cryptocurrencies as an “economic bubble” with zero intrinsic value. The only scholar who disagrees that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme….instead calls it a “collective delusion.”
Grokipedia does a far better job with a much more detailed 11,000-word write-up compared to Wikipedia’s 4,500-word entry, and arguably presents a more balanced view.
While Grokipedia acknowledges Bitcoin’s “early associations with illicit uses,” it also suggests this aspect has been overblown, and that Bitcoin’s transparency makes it traceable and unsuited for criminal use anyway.
“Bitcoin’s role in illicit finance remains disproportionately scrutinized relative to fiat currencies, where cash enables untraceable transactions comprising an estimated 2-5% of global GDP in laundering annually, per United Nations figures, versus crypto’s sub-1% onchain illicit share,” the entry states.
Grok doesn’t even mention the word “Ponzi,” whereas Wikipedia trots it out three times.
Ethereum also gets more love from Grokipedia, which devotes a whopping 14,000 words to the blockchain, diving deeper into its economics, supply mechanics and technical architecture, along with an exhaustive list of major Ethereum upgrades and EIPs. Wikipedia’s Ethereum entry, on the other hand, is a mere 4,300…
cointelegraph.com