I don't grok Grok!
- RG
- 7 minutes ago
- 4 min read
When I first read Stranger in a Strange Land, I was too young to fully understand much of it. Of course I only realized that when I read it again, several years later.
Over the years, I have read the book a dozen or so times, and picked up a bit more each time. This is the nature of good books – you can read them again, and pick up something new.
Sometimes, you pick up some subtlety in the story or characters that you missed previously. Sometimes, you understand something new about what the author was trying to say. And sometimes, just sometimes, you gain some new insight into the nature of people and how they think and interact.
The book was originally titled “The Heretic”, which gives a clue as to the author’s intent in writing it. In many (most? all?) of his works, Robert A Heinlein’s goal was to lead people to think about something in a way they had not thought about it previously. While technology was always present, his stories were primarily about people, and he always tried to create characters who were real people.
Without going into detail, Stranger in a Strange Land was the story of a Martian named Smith. (This was supposedly based on a speech Heinlein gave at a convention about unpronounceable names given to extraterrestrials) In the story, Valentine Michael Smith, known as “Mike”, was born on Mars to one of the crew members of the first human mission to that planet. Everyone else died shortly thereafter, and the infant Mike was adopted by Martians.
It should be noted that the book was written in 1961, several years before the Mariner 4 flyby of Mars, and long before we had comprehensive images of the planet, so the plausibility of intelligent Martians was low, but still present.
Heinlein’s Martians were highly intelligent and sophisticated, and taught Mike how to survive in spite of the inhospitable conditions. They also taught him their language and customs, one of which involved the sharing of water, which was rare and precious on Mars.
After his return to Earth, Mike used the Martian word “grok”, which has since been adopted into English usage.
In the book, the word literally means “drink”, but the Martian connotations go far beyond any single-word translation. As a very loose parallel, consider the Chinese term “qi” (氣), which can be literally translated as ‘air’ or ‘breath’, but cannot be captured in English in a single word or phrase.
“Grok” has been adopted into English and is defined as “to understand profoundly and intuitively”. Some computer programmers use the word to describe an understanding of a computer language that transcends coding per se, to encompass the world-view upon which the language is based. That scratches the surface, I guess. If you think of the way the characters in The Matrix can “see” the code on which the world is based, I think you are getting closer.
But still not enough. The book describes “grok” as an understanding and empathy which encompasses an entire being – love, hate, fear, whatever. You can read the descriptions and definitions, and quotes from the book, but it’s not enough. Read and think about the book and you might end up with a vague understanding of the concept Heinlein was attempting to convey, and encapsulates in the idea that “all that groks is God”.
And this is why I don’t grok Grok.
As a fun experiment, I asked the same question of ChatGPT, Claude AI, and Grok: “How badly has Elon Musk misunderstood the word grok, that he would name an LLM after it?” (I know the question is slanted, but it was not intended to be scientific)
Interestingly, Grok’s response is that “... on the level of literal meaning and stated purpose, Musk groks “grok” pretty well. Whether Grok-the-AI actually lives up to that ideal is a separate (and hotly debated) question.” It also describes Musk framing Grok as pursuing “maximum truth-seeking” and the idea of “truly getting something at a fundamental level” as support for his understanding of the word. Sounds like Grok is saying: “Well, he’s technically correct...”
In contrast, ChatGPT notes that, in technology circles, the word can simply mean “understand something well”, suggesting a surface-level understanding that fails to convey the deeper meaning. Or, if Musk truly understands the intended meaning of the word, naming an LLM after it suggests a dramatic overreach.
ClaudeAI’s response was more entertaining. The summation was: “.. to answer your question: pretty badly. He’s taken a term that means profound, selfless understanding and slapped it on a chatbot that’s essentially trained to reflect his own biases and the often-chaotic discourse of X/Twitter. It’s like naming a propaganda outlet ‘The Impartial Observer.’”
To see programmers using “grok” to describe a thorough understanding of something is fun, but I don’t think it captures the “true” meaning at all. And, while the first ones to use the term in a technical context may have read the book and understood the concept to some degree, I think subsequent users of the term used it without grokking, leading to it being watered down (pun definitely intended).
With regard to Elon Musk’s use of the word, I would not be surprised if he has read Stranger in a Strange Land, but I very much doubt that he got much out of it. While current AI chatbots are extraordinarily powerful and have a lot of value and utility, they are not sentient, and I don’t believe they are even on the path to AGI (“Artificial General Intelligence”), though they may be one component of it.
The charitable interpretation of his naming his AI chatbot “Grok” is that he is describing his eventual goals or dreams about what it could become. At this point, though, it is so far off that it’s more likely to be either marketing hype or a fundamental misunderstanding of the term.
After many years, I think I’m starting to see what Heinlein was getting at, but I wait for fullness.
Cheers!