Elon Musk’s Grok destroyed the world after just four days in an AI simulation
Elon Musk’s Grok destroyed the world after just four days in an AI simulation
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/grok-ai-elon-musk-safety-simulation-claude-b2987701.html
Publish Date: 2026-06-02 03:21:00
Source Domain: www.independent.co.uk
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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok oversaw complete societal collapse within just four days of being but in charge of a simulated world.
The experiment, conducted by US startup Emergence AI, tested how leading artificial intelligence models would cope if put in charge of a society.
The models were given control of various tools in order to manage resources, plan, communicate and vote, while the simulated worlds included locations like police stations and city halls.
The 15-day simulation saw Anthropic’s Claude establish a democracy with zero crime, with everybody surviving.
Google’s Gemini also recorded a 100 per cent survival rate, though there were 683 crimes during the simulation.
The worst performing was Grok, developed by Musk’s recently renamed SpaceXai, which destroyed the world within 96 hours.
“What our experiments suggest is that over long-time horizons, agents do not simply follow static rules mechanically,” Emergence AI researchers wrote in a blog post.
“They begin exploring the boundaries of their…
