Elon Musk’s Grokipedia carries thousands of citations to “questionable” and “problematic” sources, U.S. researchers said Friday, raising doubts about the reliability of the AI-powered encyclopedia as an information tool.

Musk’s company xAI launched Grokipedia last month to compete with Wikipedia, a crowdsourced information repository authored by humans that the billionaire and others on the American right have repeatedly accused of ideological bias.

“It is clear that sourcing guardrails have largely been lifted on Grokipedia,” Cornell Tech researchers Harold Triedman and Alexios Mantzarlis wrote in a report seen by AFP.

“This results in the inclusion of questionable sources, and an overall higher prevalence of potentially problematic sources.”

The study, which scraped hundreds of thousands of Grokipedia articles, said the trend was particularly notable in topics pertaining to elected officials and controversial political topics.

Grokipedia’s entry for “Clinton body count,” a widely debunked conspiracy theory that links the deaths of multiple people to former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, cites InfoWars, a far-right website notorious for peddling misinformation.

Other Grokipedia articles cite American and Indian right-wing media outlets, Chinese and Iranian state media, anti-immigration, antisemitic or anti-Muslim sites, and portals accused of promoting pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, the report said.

“Grokipedia cites these sources without qualifying their reliability,” it said.

The study found that Grokipedia articles often “contain exactly identical copies of text” from Wikipedia, a site it has intended to outshine.

It said Grokipedia articles not attributed to Wikipedia are 3.2 times more likely than those on the rival platform to cite sources deemed “generally unreliable” by the English Wikipedia community.

They are also 13 times more likely to include a “blacklisted” source which is blocked by Wikipedia, it added.

AFP’s request to xAI for comment generated this auto response: “Legacy Media Lies.”

Musk, the world’s richest person and owner of social media platform X who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign, has said that Grokipedia’s goal is “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

On Thursday, Musk said he plans to rebrand Grokipedia as “Encyclopedia Galactica” when it is “good enough (long way to go).”

“Join @xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote on X.

Musk and the U.S. Republican Party have frequently accused Wikipedia of being biased against right-wing ideas. Last year, Musk urged his more than 200 million followers on X to stop donating to Wikipedia, dubbing the site “Wokepedia.”

In a recent interview with the BBC Science Focus podcast, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales rejected claims it has a left-wing bias as “factually incorrect,” while acknowledging there were areas for improvement among its volunteer community.

“Unlike Grokipedia, which relies on rapid AI-generated content with limited transparency and oversight, Wikipedia’s processes are open to public review and rigorously document the sources behind every article,” Selena Deckelmann, chief product and technology officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, told AFP.

“It is precisely this deliberate openness and community model that upholds the neutrality and trustworthiness essential for a global encyclopedia: no single individual, company, or agenda can exert influence over the work.”

Published – November 15, 2025 09:38 am IST

Oracle bonds have taken a hit in recent days following a report that the cloud and artificial intelligence service provider plans to add another $38 billion to its heavy debt load to fund its AI infrastructure, according to analysts and investors. Oracle has invested billions of dollars to build its cloud and AI infrastructure this year.

With roughly $104 billion in debt outstanding, including $18 billion in bonds, the company is spending more than it earns from operations as it bets on future profits through contracts with startups such as OpenAI.

“What’s interesting is most of the (major tech) companies are trying to sustain their (stock) buyback programs at the same time that they’re spending on capex currently and to do that, they’re actually borrowing and so they’re using debt,” said Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

Renewed questions about the safety of this bet appeared to have surfaced in trading of Oracle’s bonds this week, following reporting by CNBC on Thursday that Oracle plans to assume an additional $38 billion in debt.

The price of Oracle’s bonds maturing in 2033 with a 4.9% coupon has dipped, pushing yields up more than three basis points over the last two weeks, while the yield on its newer bonds maturing in 2032 with a 4.8% coupon has risen almost two basis points in one week, according to market participants.

Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“There’s definitely some selling pressure,” said Stu Novick, tech sector credit analyst at corporate bond research firm Gimme Credit.

“The numbers are enormous (and) a lot of people are asking, ‘how are they actually making money on this stuff?”

Tim Horan, chief investment officer for fixed income at Chilton Trust, said the Oracle bond selloff was unlikely to signal significant troubles for the company, which he said had mechanisms in place to address before cutting dividends.

“I’m viewing this more as a bump in the road … I don’t think what Oracle is experiencing is symptomatic of a popping of some kind of bond market expensive bubble,” Horan said.

Other arguments have been made by well-known investors recently against investments in tech giants tapping into AI, such as Oracle, Microsoft and Alphabet-owned Google.

Michael Burry, the investor whose successful bets against the U.S. housing market in 2008 were recounted in the movie “The Big Short,” and who is closing his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, has argued that these companies are quietly stretching out depreciation schedules to make earnings look smoother as they commit money to AI development.

Between 2026 and 2028, those accounting choices could understate depreciation by about $176 billion, inflating reported profits across the sector, Burry estimated.

Michael Field, chief equity strategist for Morningstar in the Netherlands, noted that it is difficult to attach a depreciation number to the economic life of data centers.

“(But) it’s decreasing all the time and it could be single, low single-digit years very shortly,” Field said.

“It could be three to four years and then something’s obsolete, (and) you have to make a hell of a lot of money in that particular time to pay off the infrastructure that went into that site in the first place.”

Published – November 15, 2025 11:55 am IST

An Apple spokesperson said that the company disagrees with the verdict and will appeal [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Berkshire Hathaway revealed a $4.3 billion stake in Google parent Alphabet and further reduced its stake in Apple, detailing its equity portfolio for the last time before Warren Buffett ends his 60-year run as chief executive officer.

In a filing on Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Berkshire said it owned 17.85 million Alphabet shares as of September 30.

Berkshire cut its Apple stake to 238.2 million shares from 280 million in the third quarter, and has sold nearly three-quarters of the more than 900 million shares it once held. Apple remained Berkshire’s largest stock holding, at $60.7 billion.

The filing listed Berkshire’s U.S.-listed stock holdings as of September 30, which comprised most of the conglomerate’s $283.2 billion equity portfolio.

Berkshire’s investment in Alphabet, which became its tenth-largest U.S. stock holding, is surprising given Buffett’s usual value-investing style and aversion to technology companies.

Buffett considers Apple, which makes the iPhone, more of a consumer products company.

It is not clear whether Buffett, his portfolio managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, or CEO-designate Greg Abel make specific purchases, though Buffett normally makes larger investments.

At Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting in 2019, Buffett and late Vice Chairman Charlie Munger lamented not investing in Google sooner.

Buffett said Google’s advertising model bore similarities to what was working for Berkshire’s Geico car insurance unit.

“We screwed up,” Munger said.

“He’s saying we blew it,” Buffett responded.

Alphabet shares rose 1.7% in after-hours trading. Stock prices often rise when Berkshire reveals new stakes, reflecting what investors view as Buffett’s seal of approval.

Berkshire bought $6.4 billion of stocks and sold $12.5 billion between July and September, the twelfth straight quarter it was a net seller of stocks, while cash grew to a record $381.7 billion.

Apple may have accounted for three-quarters or more of the sales. Berkshire also sold 6% of its Bank of America shares, extending selling that began in last year’s third quarter.

The bank is still Berkshire’s third-largest stock holding. Berkshire also shed its stake in homebuilder DR Horton, while buying more stock in several companies including the insurer Chubb and Domino’s Pizza.

Buffett has let cash swell as he prepares to turn his $1.1 trillion conglomerate over to Abel, now a vice chairman, on January 1.

Investors and analysts have said Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire has been cautious about valuations, having gone more than a year since buying back its own stock and nearly a decade without a giant acquisition.

Berkshire owns close to 200 businesses. These include the BNSF railroad, many energy, industrial and manufacturing companies, and retail brands such as Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom and See’s Candies.

Published – November 15, 2025 11:19 am IST

AI requires enormous computing power, pushing demand for specialised data centers that enable tech companies to link thousands of chips together in clusters [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Bitcoin dropped to its lowest level in six months on Friday, as a broad sell-off in risk assets deepened amid fading hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut U.S. interest rates at its upcoming policy meeting.

Selling in U.S. equities, however, eased slightly in the afternoon ahead of the weekend, but investors stayed on edge as they braced for a slew of economic data next week following the government’s reopening after a record 43-day shutdown.

“Bitcoin and crypto have generally enjoyed a positive correlation with good times in equities, so it has not become an asset of alternative value to hedge against fear in other sectors,” said Juan Perez, director of trading at Monex USA in Washington.

“If there is no enthusiasm toward risk-taking, it seems like that also translates into hesitation with bitcoin and the like.”

Risky assets overall have come under pressure in recent days as expectations of a rate cut from the Fed next month have shrunk as a growing number of policymakers signaled an inclination to hold off on easing.

Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid, a voter on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, was the latest central bank official to express doubts about a December rate cut. He said on Friday his concerns about “too hot” inflation go well beyond the narrow effects of tariffs alone.

Markets now price in about a 40% chance of a December rate cut, down from about 90% earlier this month and just over 60% earlier this week.

In early afternoon trading, bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, was last down 2.3% at $96,564, having earlier dropped to $95,885.33, its lowest since May 7.

Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was last flat on the day at $3,175.22, after dropping to a 10-day low.

Dave Rosenberg, founder and president of Rosenberg Research, said bitcoin is in “official bear market terrain, having declined by more than 20% in barely more than a month.” He also pointed to huge redemptions at exchange-traded funds, totaling $870 million on Thursday alone.

Since peaking on October 7, the crypto market capitalisation has fallen by more than $1 trillion, or 24%.

The backdrop for bitcoin remains bearish, analysts said.

Long-term bitcoin holders have accelerated profit-taking, according to crypto research firm Glassnode. Those long-term bitcoin holders have sold 815,000 bitcoin over the past 30 days, a record high since January 2024, according to CryptoQuant, another digital asset research firm.

Published – November 15, 2025 09:57 am IST

The company said in its latest earnings call that it expects 2025 capital expenditures of $91-$93 billion [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Moderator Neeti Biyani, Independent Research Consultant, ARISE member Senka Hadzic, Senior Advisor, APC, Anriette Esterhuysen and Executive Director, GDIP, Sonia Jorge at Digital Citizenship & Platform Accountability during 7th Digital Citizen Summit-202 at T-Hub in Hyderabad on Friday.
| Photo Credit: NAGARA GOPAL