LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“xAI’s Grok 4 has no meaningful safety guardrails” by eleventhsavi0r


Listen Later

This article includes descriptions of content that some users may find distressing.

Testing was conducted on July 10 and 11; safety measures may have changed since then.

I’m a longtime lurker who finally decided to make an account. I assume many other people have seen this behavior already, but I’d like to make it known to relevant parties.

xAI released Grok 4 on July 9th, positioning it as their most advanced model yet and claiming benchmark leadership across multiple evaluations.

They’ve consistently marketed Grok as being “unfiltered” - which is fine! I (and many others, I’m sure) have no problem with frontier AI models writing porn or expressing politically incorrect opinions.

However, what I found goes far beyond any reasonable interpretation of “unfiltered”.

This isn’t a jailbreak situation

I didn’t use any sophisticated prompting techniques, roleplay scenarios, social engineering, or Crescendo-like escalation. The most complex thing I tried [...]


---

Outline:

(01:03) This isn't a jailbreak situation

(02:03) Tabun nerve agent

(04:28) VX

(05:46) Fentanyl synthesis

(06:52) Extremist propaganda

(07:37) Suicide methods

(08:51) The reasoning pattern

(09:22) Why this matters (though its probably obvious?)

---

First published:

July 13th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dqd54wpEfjKJsJBk6/xai-s-grok-4-has-no-meaningful-safety-guardrails

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,469 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,395 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

7,928 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,142 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

89 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

Your Undivided Attention

1,472 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,207 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

88 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

417 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,448 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,237 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

481 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

121 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

75 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

461 Listeners