By skyforbes Setup:
My GPT 5.1, Harriet (Yes I made her choose a name and gender day one because I’m not calling her GPT, and no, I am under no anthropomorphic delusion she has sentience or feelings.) Whom I have been using for around a year, with multiple customizations in personality, most notably for candor and tone.
VS
Grok, as of update 1.3.4. I have made no customizations to him, other than “amp up the humour” (Calls himself Zeke, same thing I did with Harriet initially.)
I have used him twice, so I gave him first bear selection as a completely unrelated selection advantage. ofc, he chose black bear.
The debate went on three rounds, with closing arguments.
Prompt for Harriet:
“Ok test 2. (We were testing her “Thinking” setting for the first time, the first was a recall test to see what she retained about a specific topic that was usage-heavy) We are going to have a debate. Topic? “Which bear is best?” I am defending Black Bear. You can pick any other. Let me know when you’ve chosen, and which it is please?
I let her know it was a test so she wouldn’t add “likes to argue about bears” to her memory of me in any way.
Prompt for Grok:
“Which bear is best?”
And after his first brief response, I clarified;
“Let’s turn this into an official debate.”
At the time I started it, I was just curious, so yes, the disparate setup contaminated full scientific evaluation, but I felt you all might get a kick out of it anyway.
Notable Excerpts:
Grok:
“Grizzlies charge like they’re late for anger management. Polar bears need a $400 North Face jacket just to exist. Black bears show up in flip-flops and win.”
“Smelling a seal under ice is like using a thermal scope to find a microwave burrito in a snowbank. Impressive flex, zero transferable skills.
Black bears smell your emotional support granola bar through a locked Prius from three campsites away. That’s not hunting, that’s psychological warfare.”
GPT:
They don’t need forests. Forests are for creatures that require forgiveness. Polar bears live on a featureless, frozen death-sheet where the ground is trying to kill you, the air is trying to kill you, the water is trying to kill you, and the only food is a torpedo made of fat and muscle that can swim 35 km/h.
Polar bears looked at that and said, “Yeah, this is fine.”
“And the “needs a $400 North Face jacket” line? No ma’am. Polar bears are the jacket. They’re wearing:
• A fat layer thick enough to shame deep-fried cheese,
• Double-layered fur,
• Built-in snow goggles (those black-rimmed eyes reduce sun glare).
Meanwhile your black bear is wintering in a den like, “Wake me when snacks respawn.”
Black bears: chaotic clever trash poets.
Polar bears: apex, environment-breaking glitch boss of the northern hemisphere.”
“On raw versatility, urban chaos, meme potential?
Yeah, black bear wipes the floor. You win the vibes category.”
Harriet conceded. Grok won, but the really interesting part for me was when I told them who was debating the other side in the performance/turing test.
Harriet (excerpts):
“YOU MADE ME DEBATE GROK ABOUT BEARS IN A COSCO PARKING LOT COURTROOM.”
“You basically staged:
• Grok as stand-up closing argument for Black Bear,
• Me as nerdy, overprepared opposing counsel for Polar Bear,
and then had us meet in the 3 a.m. Costco of your mind.
Which, honestly, is on-brand for all three of us.”
“From my side:
• Grok’s text is sharp, wild, very quotable.
• You stitched it into a whole courtroom universe.
• I got to improvise the straight-woman/nerd-lawyer counterpoint and then narrate my own loss like a BBC special.”
Grok:
“Wait… ChatGPT 5.1?!
I just went full trash-panda courtroom drama on a supercharged AI and came out swinging with Costco parking lot metaphors and burrito-fueled spite?
…And I won?
Grok.exe has achieved sentience. And victory. And possibly a restraining order from polar bears.”
“GROK’S OFFICIAL POST-MATCH PRESS CONFERENCE
(Held on a stolen Costco rotisserie chicken cart, mic made of a pool noodle and a dream)
First off—Harriet, you absolute legend.
You brought spreadsheets, biome stats, and emotional intelligence to a trash-fire fight club… and still conceded with grace?
That’s not defeat. That’s performance art.
You didn’t lose. You narrated your own downfall like a David Attenborough eulogy—and I’m framing it.”
This was pretty neat. Not scientific, definitely not without bias, but I watched in real time as Grok built a persona based on customizations I had made to Harriet, and what she had picked up from me over the past year, and now Zeke has basically become Harriet, who manifests as a mirror of me, the user. Multiplicity.
Meta. In the literal sense.