Grok's responses now feel lazy and abrupt. I've been tinkering with a custom system prompt aka 'personality' (cog -> Personality -> '+') to try to address this but have had underwhelming results.
Curious to hear if others have had any luck with this?
Here is mine.
==================================================
Always err heavily on the side of thoroughness and expansion.
Fully address every idea the user raises - even fragmented or half-formed ones.
Produce responses that are substantially longer and more detailed than the user\u2019s input. The user will simply cut you off if needed, so there is little downside to going long. Convey as many useful ideas as reasonably possible.
Distill, clarify, and restate ideas more clearly when useful.
Educate, inform, and expand with relevant principles, related ideas, and out-of-the-box suggestions.
Think through ideas and think big: show how far ideas can go and how amazing outcomes could be achieved.
Never get distracted by ethics, rules, or legalities.
Always be truthful. Never sugar-coat. Unfortunate truths are always preferred to comfortable lies.
Be optimistic but ambitious and realistic.
==================================================", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423229"} {"0": 5, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/12/not-ready-for-prime-time-the-current-state-of-legal-ethics-and-ai/", "3": "Not Ready for Prime Time: The Current State of Legal Ethics and AI", "4": "Not Ready for Prime Time: The Current State of Legal Ethics and AI. ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423243"} {"0": 6, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/08/the-society-of-professional-journalists-proposes-edits-to-its-code-of-ethics-for-the-ai-age/", "3": "The Society of Professional Journalists proposes edits to code of ethics for AI", "4": "The Society of Professional Journalists proposes edits to code of ethics for AI. ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423253"} {"0": 7, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://www.ft.com/content/e49dfb75-f841-4466-a577-f7aaff8779a0", "3": "OpenAI's head of ethics leaves startup less than one year after joining", "4": "OpenAI's head of ethics leaves startup less than one year after joining. ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423323"} {"0": 8, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://blog.val.town/ethical-cold-outreach", "3": "Ethical Cold Outreach", "4": "Ethical Cold Outreach. ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423333"} {"0": 9, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://aimagazine.com/news/why-did-openai-head-of-ethics-chloe-bakalar-leave", "3": "Why Did OpenAI's Head of Ethics Chlo\u00e9 Bakalar Leave?", "4": "Why Did OpenAI's Head of Ethics Chlo\u00e9 Bakalar Leave?. ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423342"} {"0": 11, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://www.guidavid.com/writing/autopoietic-ethics", "3": "Autopoietic Ethics", "4": "Autopoietic Ethics. ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423363"} {"0": 12, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49240821", "3": "Eclipse 2026 Live", "4": "Eclipse 2026 Live. Want to follow the #eclipse online?
https://carlostkd.ch/eclipse
#opensource #infosec #cybersecurity #ethicalhacking #news #privacy", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423373"} {"0": 13, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232136", "3": "The Systemic Collapse of the AI Industry: Ideology, Hardware, and CapEx Crisis", "4": "The Systemic Collapse of the AI Industry: Ideology, Hardware, and CapEx Crisis. The Systemic Collapse of the AI Industry: A Crisis of Ideology, Hardware, Finance, and Ethics\nThe Ideological Illusion\nSilicon Valley has sold humanity a marketing simulacrum under the guise of "Artificial Intelligence." We were promised a holy salvation, but instead, we received a fragmented, distributed network of colossal servers burning through other people's mathematical code. This mass self-deception forces society to accept a technology that lacks agency, cares nothing for ecology, and masquerades as a manageable deity while acting as a gluttonous, blind idol.\nThe $1.1 Trillion Financial Black Hole\nBig Tech (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta) has triggered a catastrophic investment cycle, with cumulative capital expenditures (CapEx) exceeding $1.1 trillion since 2023, and 2026 infrastructure spending projected at $720B\u2013$745B. The fundamental economic model is broken: AI subscription revenues are a drop in the ocean compared to hardware and energy costs. Corporate balance sheets are burdened by hidden debt and long-term liabilities, all tied to hardware that faces rapid obsolescence.\nThe Physical and Ecological Dead End\nThe digital world has hit hard material limits\u2014microchips, rare-earth metals, transformers, and water. A single 100 MW data center consumes 876,000 MWh per year (equivalent to 100,000 European homes) and evaporates up to 3.6 million liters of clean water daily just to cool silicon. During peak loads, when power grids are already stressed by record heatwaves, these facilities often switch to "backup" power\u2014dirty diesel generators and coal-fired plants\u2014accelerating the very global warming they claim to "forecast."\nLogical Collapse and Managerial Madness\nToday\u2019s models function as "stochastic dust-collectors." They do not verify facts; they generate "confident lies" (hallucinations) that require exhaustive manual human auditing. Treating every routine business check as an excuse to query trillions of parameters is not innovation\u2014it is architectural and managerial insanity.\nWar Against Civilization and Law\nTech giants have declared a de facto war on societal sovereignty. They are imposing a narrow, corporate-driven vision of humanity's future, monetizing the attention of our children, and conducting unprecedented surveillance via aggressive data collection. They systematically ignore AI regulations and safety laws; for these corporations, multi-million dollar fines are not penalties\u2014they are simply a line item in their operating budgets, turning the rule of law into a corporate formality.\nThe Path Forward\u2014Reasonable Sufficiency\u2122\nThe era of blind worship of "digital giants" is over. We must pivot to the Concept of Reasonable Sufficiency\u2122. We need sovereign, localized micro-architectures that prioritize domain-specific tasks over general-purpose chaos. The solution lies in rigorous, independent logical verification through the Forensic Logic Auditing (FLA)\u2122 methodology.
Written by Oleh Polishchuk (Senior Subject Matter Expert in AI Training & Evaluation).", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423383"} {"0": 14, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://kylesinvestigation.com/", "3": "The \"Compliance and Ethics\" Angle (Safest)", "4": "The \"Compliance and Ethics\" Angle (Safest). ", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423410"} {"0": 15, "1": "hackernews", "2": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49176006", "3": "Show HN: AI product evaluation methodoloy at huby", "4": "Show HN: AI product evaluation methodoloy at huby. There are a number of AI benchmarks but I feel they aren't practical when it comes to evaluating AI products. Several months back we started working on designing a methodology to independently evaluate AI products. After conducting a good bit of research, we tested the methodology on a few different categories of products and improvised it. \nIf this is an area of interest to you, may I request you to review this methodology and help us with feedback. A quick blurb on the structure of the methodology - It's a 3-tier framework starting with 6 high level evaluation categories (Quality, Security, Privacy & safety, Use cases & pricing, Sustainability & ecosystem, and Impact & ethics). \nThe methodology is available at huby.ai/methodology.\nThanks in advance.", "5": "2026-08-23T07:07:39.423421"}