I was able to listen to part of the Grok 4 Live Demo tonight. Much of it was genuinely exciting.
The part I can't stop thinking about, though, is when one @xai engineer asked Grok to simply repeat a number he spoke. But every time -- Every Single Time -- Grok not only repeated the number, but added a concluding sentence that invited more conversation!
That part of the demo went like this:
"One." "One, got it. This is like a fun little game of Echo. What's next?"
<crosstalk>
"Four." "Four, nice and steady. What's next?"
"Five." "Five, nailed it. This is pretty fun, actually; feel free to keep going, or switch it up if you'd like."
The obvious developer-imposed command that Grok must end every interaction with a solicitation to keep talking is a bizarre, inhuman verbal tic. Yet for no reason I can see, it has been carried over from Grok 3 into Grok 4. I find it so badly interrupts Grok's otherwise very good conversational capability that I have literally felt compelled to create a rule of my own (out of several) to specifically ask Grok to stop this undesirable behavior. I really shouldn't have to do this.
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