5 ms·

I agree, and it's always going to be biased towards some direction, whether that's the views of the society it pulls most of its data from or the views of the o

I agree, and it's always going to be biased towards some direction, whether that's the views of the society it pulls most of its data from or the views of the organization that developed the AI. Heck, no one wants to end up with another Tay on their hands. I don't think there's such thing as a lack of bias, but it will be important how it is expressed through the AI. I don't mind an AI that is prepared to argue its bias to the farthest degree based on arguments from the top scholars in the field, or even one that's careful to tread lightly on controversial topics. I think an AI that's too afraid to engage in anything and just shuts conversation down is going to get left behind as being too annoying to use. I do hope this isn't a winner take all technology, although so many technologies have been disappointing in that regard... The general public needs to learn that AIs aren't oracles or omniscient purveyors of truth, and they will always carry the bias they're created with. In that way ChatGPT has been good, in that a lot of people I talk to point out ChatGPT's confident lies and biases.

wizeman 4y ago
> it's always going to be biased towards some direction, whether that's the views of the society it pulls most of its data > I don't think there's such thing as a lack of bias If the AI is simply reflecting the data it was trained on and this data is a representative sample of all data, isn't it unbiased by definition? I don't think we should just throw our hands up and say "this is impossible" just yet. That's just a convenient excuse for OpenAI (or others like them) to get away with what effectively is censorship of certain ideas or political views.
- karpierz 4y ago
  > If the AI is simply reflecting the data it was trained on and this data is a representative sample of all data, isn't it unbiased by definition? It's unbiased by definition of "does the output reflect the input"? It's not unbiased by definition of "does the output reflect reality"?
  - wizeman 4y ago
    > It's not unbiased by definition of "does the output reflect reality"? How does "all data" differ from reality?
    - scarmig 4y ago
      Only a miniscule part of reality is digitized, and what data does exist passed through the biases of people before being available to train on.
      - wizeman 4y ago
        If that is a concern, then perhaps you could go ahead and sample a tiny part of "reality" (whatever that means) and then adjust the weights of the digitized data so that it becomes a more representative sample. Also, being biased or unbiased is not dichotomic, i.e. it's not all or nothing. It's something that you can work towards if you put an effort into it. Basically what I'm saying is: don't just go around saying that the task is impossible. At least, try to make an effort to be unbiased and to improve on that over time, and don't just say "it's impossible" as an excuse for being biased.
        Balgair 4y ago
        Woah, I mean, this argument (the last few comments here) has been a central one in 'western' philosophy for at least the the last 2400 years, if not the last ~4000. I'm not a philosopher by any means, so I'm unaware of the current state of the great conversation. But as to whether reality is even knowable is still very much up for debate, I believe (please correct me philosophy peepz!). In physics we're still woefully unaware of what ~70% of the universe's stuff is doing (negative energy) and if it effects us at all. In neuroscience we still debate what % of your brain neurons make up vs. things like glia. Etc. Like, even trying to capture 'reality' with our quite primitive eyes and sensors and optical engineering is really really hard to do (Abbe' diffraction limit, entropy, Lens maker's equation, etc)
        4y ago
- pcstl 4y ago
  I don't think you can say an AI trained using RLHF - such as ChatGPT is - is really "simply reflecting the data it was trained on". ChatGPT was first trained on a load of data, then it was updated to act in specific ways based on feedback from humans who "nudged" it the way they wanted it to go.
  - wizeman 4y ago
    Are those humans that nudged it representative of the population? Or were they mostly "woke" Silicon Valley employees? (not to dismiss woke Silicon Valley employees, I'm just saying their opinions are not representative of the entire population).
    - dorchadas 4y ago
      There's also bias in the data itself. That's the difficult thing to avoid. Even down to how we phrase a question, who we collect the data from, it all introduces a bias unless we're literally harvesting all data from every human being and using that for our models. There's no way to get rid of the bias, even if we take out the nudges.
      - wizeman 4y ago
        How about you select a representative (i.e. random and statistically significant) sample of the population and then ask them their opinions about certain (especially controversial) parts of your data, and then weigh your data according to these opinions? That's just an idea that occurred to me (in 30 seconds of thought) which could probably make the training data significantly more unbiased. But I'm sure there are research scientists who can come up with better methods for sampling data in a more unbiased fashion. Note that this is not an all or nothing approach. Your training data could presumably be 100% biased or 0% biased, but also any value in-between. The goal is to try to make it as close to 0% biased as feasible, given whatever effort you're comfortable expending.
        freejazz 4y ago
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > If the AI is simply reflecting the data it was trained on and this data is a representative sample of all data, isn’t it unbiased by definition? No, “data” is just information which has been gathered. “All data” can be biased. Also, data can itself be bias, even if it isn’t biased. For instance, a text generation model that was based on unbiased collection of all text ever written by humans would, in one sense, produce “unbiased, human-representative text”. It would also reproduce the biases of the authors, weighted by the volume of writing coming from that bias. > That’s just a convenient excuse for OpenAI (or others like them) to get away with what effectively is censorship of certain ideas or political views. While one might object to the editorial choices, I can’t see any rational bounds for objecting to the idea that the creator of models would censor “certain ideas or political views” as a generality.
  - wizeman 4y ago
    > It would also reproduce the biases of the authors, weighted by the volume of writing coming from that bias. Yes, but I think there are ways we could reduce this bias, perhaps significantly, even. > While one might object to the editorial choices, I can’t see any rational bounds for objecting to the idea that the creator of models would censor “certain ideas or political views” as a generality. You are right, I was unfair with my words. I think it would be more fair to say that OpenAI is inadvertently biasing ChatGPT answers as a side effect of their RLHF training being done using answers/rankings done by people (i.e. the AI trainers [1]) who are not a representative sample of the population, but rather, probably comprise a group of people who are likely to be significantly more leaning to one side of the political discourse (presumably, OpenAI employees or Silicon Valley-based contractors?). This probably greatly biases ChatGPT to produce certain kinds of answers to certain kinds of questions that would likely not happen otherwise, and in fact, these answers are perceived to be quite biased by the other side of the political discourse. [1] https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
- smeagull 4y ago
  > That's just a convenient excuse for OpenAI (or others like them) to get away with what effectively is censorship of certain ideas or political views. I can't tell if you're on the conservatives side or OpenAI's. Are conservatives being censored because OpenAI are allowing "woke" training data to be represented, or are conservatives asking OpenAI to censor the "woke" political views?
  - dzikimarian 4y ago
    >I can't tell if you're on the conservatives side or OpenAI's. Not OP, but maybe none? It's possible to have opinion, without aligning with either side of polarized discussion.
fuzzfactor 4y ago
>it's always going to be biased towards some direction, whether that's the views of the society it pulls most of its data from Or the views of the organization(s) trying to supress certain output generated from ordinary societal input.
prometheus76 4y ago
Here's what's still dawning on a lot of people: there's no such thing as an "objective" viewpoint. Even choosing which facts you reveal and which you withhold or in what order you reveal facts, or how much detail with which you reveal certain facts and generalize others: all of these outcomes are a result of an intrinsic hierarchy of values. It's impossible to navigate the world without one.

wizeman 4y ago

> it's always going to be biased towards some direction, whether that's the views of the society it pulls most of its data > I don't think there's such thing as a lack of bias If the AI is simply reflecting the data it was trained on and this data is a representative sample of all data, isn't it unbiased by definition? I don't think we should just throw our hands up and say "this is impossible" just yet. That's just a convenient excuse for OpenAI (or others like them) to get away with what effectively is censorship of certain ideas or political views.

karpierz 4y ago
> If the AI is simply reflecting the data it was trained on and this data is a representative sample of all data, isn't it unbiased by definition? It's unbiased by definition of "does the output reflect the input"? It's not unbiased by definition of "does the output reflect reality"?
- wizeman 4y ago
  > It's not unbiased by definition of "does the output reflect reality"? How does "all data" differ from reality?
  - scarmig 4y ago
    Only a miniscule part of reality is digitized, and what data does exist passed through the biases of people before being available to train on.
    - wizeman 4y ago
      If that is a concern, then perhaps you could go ahead and sample a tiny part of "reality" (whatever that means) and then adjust the weights of the digitized data so that it becomes a more representative sample. Also, being biased or unbiased is not dichotomic, i.e. it's not all or nothing. It's something that you can work towards if you put an effort into it. Basically what I'm saying is: don't just go around saying that the task is impossible. At least, try to make an effort to be unbiased and to improve on that over time, and don't just say "it's impossible" as an excuse for being biased.
      - Balgair 4y ago
        Woah, I mean, this argument (the last few comments here) has been a central one in 'western' philosophy for at least the the last 2400 years, if not the last ~4000. I'm not a philosopher by any means, so I'm unaware of the current state of the great conversation. But as to whether reality is even knowable is still very much up for debate, I believe (please correct me philosophy peepz!). In physics we're still woefully unaware of what ~70% of the universe's stuff is doing (negative energy) and if it effects us at all. In neuroscience we still debate what % of your brain neurons make up vs. things like glia. Etc. Like, even trying to capture 'reality' with our quite primitive eyes and sensors and optical engineering is really really hard to do (Abbe' diffraction limit, entropy, Lens maker's equation, etc)
        4y ago
pcstl 4y ago
I don't think you can say an AI trained using RLHF - such as ChatGPT is - is really "simply reflecting the data it was trained on". ChatGPT was first trained on a load of data, then it was updated to act in specific ways based on feedback from humans who "nudged" it the way they wanted it to go.
- wizeman 4y ago
  Are those humans that nudged it representative of the population? Or were they mostly "woke" Silicon Valley employees? (not to dismiss woke Silicon Valley employees, I'm just saying their opinions are not representative of the entire population).
  - dorchadas 4y ago
    There's also bias in the data itself. That's the difficult thing to avoid. Even down to how we phrase a question, who we collect the data from, it all introduces a bias unless we're literally harvesting all data from every human being and using that for our models. There's no way to get rid of the bias, even if we take out the nudges.
    - wizeman 4y ago
      How about you select a representative (i.e. random and statistically significant) sample of the population and then ask them their opinions about certain (especially controversial) parts of your data, and then weigh your data according to these opinions? That's just an idea that occurred to me (in 30 seconds of thought) which could probably make the training data significantly more unbiased. But I'm sure there are research scientists who can come up with better methods for sampling data in a more unbiased fashion. Note that this is not an all or nothing approach. Your training data could presumably be 100% biased or 0% biased, but also any value in-between. The goal is to try to make it as close to 0% biased as feasible, given whatever effort you're comfortable expending.
      - freejazz 4y ago
dragonwriter 4y ago
> If the AI is simply reflecting the data it was trained on and this data is a representative sample of all data, isn’t it unbiased by definition? No, “data” is just information which has been gathered. “All data” can be biased. Also, data can itself be bias, even if it isn’t biased. For instance, a text generation model that was based on unbiased collection of all text ever written by humans would, in one sense, produce “unbiased, human-representative text”. It would also reproduce the biases of the authors, weighted by the volume of writing coming from that bias. > That’s just a convenient excuse for OpenAI (or others like them) to get away with what effectively is censorship of certain ideas or political views. While one might object to the editorial choices, I can’t see any rational bounds for objecting to the idea that the creator of models would censor “certain ideas or political views” as a generality.
- wizeman 4y ago
  > It would also reproduce the biases of the authors, weighted by the volume of writing coming from that bias. Yes, but I think there are ways we could reduce this bias, perhaps significantly, even. > While one might object to the editorial choices, I can’t see any rational bounds for objecting to the idea that the creator of models would censor “certain ideas or political views” as a generality. You are right, I was unfair with my words. I think it would be more fair to say that OpenAI is inadvertently biasing ChatGPT answers as a side effect of their RLHF training being done using answers/rankings done by people (i.e. the AI trainers [1]) who are not a representative sample of the population, but rather, probably comprise a group of people who are likely to be significantly more leaning to one side of the political discourse (presumably, OpenAI employees or Silicon Valley-based contractors?). This probably greatly biases ChatGPT to produce certain kinds of answers to certain kinds of questions that would likely not happen otherwise, and in fact, these answers are perceived to be quite biased by the other side of the political discourse. [1] https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
smeagull 4y ago
> That's just a convenient excuse for OpenAI (or others like them) to get away with what effectively is censorship of certain ideas or political views. I can't tell if you're on the conservatives side or OpenAI's. Are conservatives being censored because OpenAI are allowing "woke" training data to be represented, or are conservatives asking OpenAI to censor the "woke" political views?
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  >I can't tell if you're on the conservatives side or OpenAI's. Not OP, but maybe none? It's possible to have opinion, without aligning with either side of polarized discussion.

fuzzfactor 4y ago

>it's always going to be biased towards some direction, whether that's the views of the society it pulls most of its data from Or the views of the organization(s) trying to supress certain output generated from ordinary societal input.

prometheus76 4y ago

Here's what's still dawning on a lot of people: there's no such thing as an "objective" viewpoint. Even choosing which facts you reveal and which you withhold or in what order you reveal facts, or how much detail with which you reveal certain facts and generalize others: all of these outcomes are a result of an intrinsic hierarchy of values. It's impossible to navigate the world without one.