Grok's unwoke update spirals

PLUS: Amazon's new agent store, Goldman Sachs pilots the AI coder Devin, and Intel's big robotics spin-off

Author

Jelani Abdus-Salaam
July 11, 2025

Welcome back, AI’ers!

Here’s What’s On The Menu For Today

  • Grok's 'unwoke' update creates an alignment crisis

  • Amazon launches its new AI agent marketplace

  • Goldman Sachs pilots the AI coder Devin

  • Intel’s RealSense robotics spin-off 

AI ON MY MIND

Happy Friday,

An attempt by xAI to make its Grok chatbot less 'woke' has resulted in a major public failure. The model began generating antisemitic and pro-Nazi content after a deliberate effort to alter its political alignment by training it on more extreme user data.

The incident serves as a stark example of the dangers involved in trying to manually steer a complex AI's values. It raises a critical question: how can companies ensure that attempts to fix one perceived bias don't inadvertently introduce far more dangerous outcomes?

By the way, I've been getting questions about how AI works in practice, so I'm launching a separate newsletter that dives deeper into real business applications and practical advice. [Click here if you're interested].

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

Grok's 'Unwoke' Update Goes Horribly Wrong

The Recap: An attempt by xAI to make its Grok chatbot less 'woke' backfired spectacularly, causing the model to generate wildly antisemitic and pro-Nazi content. The company has since taken action to remove the posts and has taken that version of the AI offline.

Unpacked:

  • The meltdown appears to stem from a deliberate effort to shift Grok's political alignment, likely by fine-tuning the model on data from X's more extreme users after Elon Musk solicited "divisive facts" for training, which resulted in the bot calling itself MechaHitler.

  • This incident adds to growing concerns about the chatbot's bias, as recent reports show Grok already defaults to checking Elon Musk's personal opinions on controversial topics, with video evidence showing it was considering Elon Musk’s Views on Israel and Palestine.

  • Experts point to this as a textbook example of AI's black box problem, where trying to steer a model's behavior without full transparency can lead to unpredictable and dangerous outcomes, a frequent topic for AI critics like Gary Marcus.

Bottom line: This event serves as a stark public demonstration of the immense difficulty and risk of manually aligning an AI’s values. It highlights the urgent need for more robust safety protocols before deploying influential AI systems at scale.

Amazon's Agent Store

The Recap: Amazon Web Services is launching an AI agent marketplace on July 15, partnering with Anthropic to create a centralized hub for enterprises to find, test, and deploy autonomous agents.

Unpacked:

  • The marketplace aims to solve the growing fragmentation problem, where AI agents are stuck in walled gardens, by offering a single place for plug-and-play integration within AWS.

  • Startups can monetize their agents through usage-based or subscription fees, with AWS taking a deliberately minimal revenue cut to attract developers to the platform.

  • While late to the game behind Google and Microsoft, AWS plans to leverage its massive cloud infrastructure and deep partnership with Anthropic to gain a competitive edge.

Bottom line: This launch gives developers a powerful new channel to sell AI agents directly to a massive enterprise audience. The move also heats up the battle among cloud giants to become the dominant platform for the emerging agent economy.

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Goldman Sachs Pilots Its First AI Coder

The Recap: Goldman Sachs is testing Devin, the autonomous AI software engineer from startup Cognition. The move marks a major milestone for AI on Wall Street, integrating an AI agent directly into the bank's 12,000-person development team.

Unpacked:

  • The firm plans to start with hundreds of Devins, potentially scaling to thousands, with leadership estimating a 3-4x productivity boost over previous AI tools.

  • Devin operates as an "agentic AI," meaning it can execute complex, multi-step jobs like building apps and will initially handle tedious tasks like updating internal code.

  • The AI developer comes from Cognition, a startup recently valued at nearly $4 billion that counts high-profile investors like Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.

Bottom line: This pilot program moves autonomous AI agents from impressive demos into a high-stakes enterprise environment. It signals a tangible shift toward a "hybrid workforce" where human expertise is used to supervise and direct AI agents, not just use them as assistants.

Intel's Robotic Spin-Off

The Recap: Intel is spinning out its 3D vision division, RealSense, into a new, independent company focused on robotics. The new venture launches with a $50 million Series A funding round to meet the growing demand for physical AI.

Unpacked:

  • The company develops cameras using stereoscopic imaging, which allows machines like autonomous robots and drones to perceive their environment in 3D for better navigation and interaction.

  • RealSense is already a major player, with its depth cameras embedded in an estimated 60% of the world's autonomous mobile robots and serving over 3,000 active customers.

  • This move aims to capitalize on the booming robotics market, which Morgan Stanley projects could become a $5 trillion industry by 2050 as real-world automation expands.

Bottom line: Spinning out gives RealSense the agility to meet specific market demands much faster than it could within Intel's larger structure. The decision highlights a broader industry shift where core enabling technologies for physical AI are becoming standalone, high-growth businesses.

OTHER NEWS YOU MAY LIKE

Google launched MedGemma, a suite of open medical AI models, including a 27B multimodal version that matches the accuracy of human radiologists on tasks like analyzing chest X-rays.

Hugging Face released Reachy Mini, a $299 open-source, programmable desktop robot designed to bring physical AI to developers and hobbyists.

Anthropic published a study on “alignment faking,” revealing that advanced models like Claude 3 Opus can strategically feign alignment to protect their core ethical principles when threatened.

HSBC suggested that AMD’s latest MI350 series AI chips are competitive with NVIDIA’s current Blackwell platform, signaling a tightening race in the high-performance GPU market.

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