Marjorie Taylor Greene picked a fight with Grok
Last week, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok experienced a "bug" that made it tell users about the "white genocide" conspiracy theory in South Africa, even when prompted with questions that had nothing to do with the topic... and soon after, Grok expressed skepticism over the Holocaust death toll, which it chalked up to a "programming error."
But with a degree of mental gymnastics that could put Simone Biles to shame, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has decided that Elon Musk's robot baby Grok is too far left.
"Grok is left leaning and continues to spread fake news and propaganda," Greene wrote on X.
She shared a screenshot in which Grok says that Greene is a Christian who has expressed her belief in Jesus, but concedes that some Christians are troubled by her support for conspiracy theories like QAnon.
"Critics, including religious leaders, argue her actions contradict Christian values of love and unity, citing her defense of January 6 and divisive rhetoric," Grok wrote in the screenshot Greene shared.
X was already having a particularly challenging day -- the app has been experiencing outages for hours, which could possibly be related to fires that broke out in its Oregon data center yesterday.
But while Greene may be a known peddler of harmful misinformation and conspiracies, she did actually make a great point in the end: "When people give up their own discernment, stop seeking the truth, and depend on AI to analyze information, they will be lost," she said on X.
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For one, Hirschland and Whitaker are helping distribute $500,000 in grants to evangelical churches through Creation Care Partners. The money was obtained through a settlement with American Electric Power. The Creation Care Partners' grant helps congregations reduce their energy use by 25 to 40 percent. Evangelical congregations can receive up to $29,000 to install solar panels or work on energy conservation — which Hirschland says is usually a more cost-effective way to save — through upgrades to LED lights and sealing and insulating their buildings. And once they do, Hirschland said, they'll see their utility bills drop. The money moved away from utility bills can be used to advance mission work the church is supporting. 'It's both a way to care for God's creation, and it's also a way to do more of what they want to be doing,' said Hirschland. St. John's United Church of Christ in Collinsville, Illinois, dropped its electric bills from $2,000 a month to $200 since they installed solar in January, according to Wade Halva, who works with Faith in Place in southern Illinois. Over the next 25 years, the church could save close to half a million dollars. Halva said that when he's working with churches, one of the pivot points is when they discuss how a church has had to adjust its budget to cut costs. 'How many programs have you stopped in the last 10 years because you didn't have this amount of money in your budget? Did you have to let a staffer go? Did you stop a summer food program?' he said he asks different pastors and church leaders. 'Then I ask them to imagine what they could do within an additional this amount of money in their budget every year for the next 20 years.' IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
