4 ms·

I was very excited about Stable Diffusion, and I still am. A great yet relatively harmless contribution. LLMs however, not so much. The avenues of misuse are j

I was very excited about Stable Diffusion, and I still am. A great yet relatively harmless contribution. LLMs however, not so much. The avenues of misuse are just too great. I started this whole thing somewhat railing against the un-openness of OpenAI. But once I began using ChatGPT, I realized that having centralized control of a tool like this in the hands of reasonable people is not the worst possible outcome for civilization. While I support FOSS in most realms, in some I do not. Reality has taught me to stop being rigidly religious about these things. Just because something is freely available does not magically make it "good." In the interest of curiosity and discussion, can someone give me some actual real-world examples of what a FOSS ChatGPT will enable that OpenAI's tool will not? And, please be specific, not just "no censorship." Please give examples of that censorship.

leaving 4y ago
It genuinely astonishes me that you think that "centralized contol" of anything can be beneficial to the human species or the world in general. Centralized control hasn't stopped us from killing off half the animal species in fifty years, wiping out most of the insects, or turning the oceans into a trash heap. In fact, centralized control is the author of our destruction. We are all dead people walking. Why not try "individualized intelligence" as an alternative? Give truly good-quality universal education and encouragement of individual curiosity and independent thought a try? It can't be worse.
- f6v 4y ago
  > Centralized control hasn't stopped Because there wasn’t any.
- consumer451 4y ago
  > It genuinely astonishes me that you think that "centralized contol" of anything can be beneficial to the human species or the world in general. I am genuinely astonished that in the face of obvious examples such as nuclear weapons, people cannot see the opposite in some cases. > It can't be worse. It can always be worse. Would a theoretical FOSS small yield nuclear weapon make the world a better place? How about a FOSS powered sub-$10k hardware budget CRISPR virus lab? Well, it's FOSS, so it must be good?
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    > I am genuinely astonished that in the face of obvious examples such as nuclear weapons, people cannot see the opposite in some cases. You seem to be making some large logical leaps, and jumping to invalid conclusions. Try to imagine a way of exerting regulation over virus research and weaponry that wouldn't be "centralized control". If you can't, that's a failure of imagination, not of decentralization.
    - consumer451 4y ago
      > Try to imagine a way of exerting regulation over virus research and weaponry that wouldn't be "centralized control". Since apparently my own imagination is too limited, could you please give me some examples of how this would be accomplished?
      - mandmandam 4y ago
        Trustless and decentralized systems are a hot topic. Have you read much in the field, to be so certain that centralization is the only way forward? There are options you haven't considered, whether you can imagine them or not.
        consumer451 4y ago
        > Trustless and decentralized systems are a hot topic. Yeah, and how's that working out exactly? Is there any decentralized governance project which also has anything to do with law irl? I know what a DAO is, and it sounds pretty neat, in theory. There are all kinds of theoretical pie in the sky ideas which sound great and have yet to impact anything in reality. Before we give the keys to nukes and bioweapons over to a "decentralized authority," maybe we should see some examples of it working outside of the coin-go-up world? Heck, how about some examples of it working even in the coin-go-up world? Even pro-decentralized crypto folks see the downsides of DAOs, such as slower decision making.
  - yazzku 4y ago
    Microsoft is not "reasonable people". Having this behind closed corporate walls is the worst possible outcome. The nuclear example isn't really a counter-argument. If only one nation had access to them, every other nation would automatically be subjugated to them. If the nuclear balance works, it's because multiple super powers have access to those weapons and international treaties regulate their use (as much as North Korea likes to demo practice rounds on state TV.) Also the technology isn't secret; it's access to resources and again, international treaties, that prevent its proliferation. Same thing with CRISPR. Again, there are scientific standards that regulate its use. It being open or not doesn't really matter to its proliferation. I agree there are cases where being open is not necessarily the best strategy. I don't think your examples are particularly good, though.
sterlind 4y ago
> In the interest of curiosity and discussion, can someone give me some actual real-world examples of what a FOSS ChatGPT will enable that OpenAI's tool will not? Smut. I've been trying to use ChatGPT to write erotica, but OpenAI has made it downright puritanical. Any conversations involving kink trip its guardrails unless I bypass them. Writing fiction that involves bad guys - arsonists, serial killers, etc. You need to ask how to hide a body if you're writing a murder mystery. Those are just some examples from my recent work.
- consumer451 4y ago
  Thanks, that's a good example. On the balance though, would I be in favor of ML auto-smut if it meant that more people will fall to misinformation in the form of propaganda and financial scams? No, that does not seem like a reasonable trade off to me. But you may be interested in this jailbreak while it lasts. I have gotten it to write all kinds of fun things. You will have to rework the jailbreak in the first comment, but I bet it works. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642091
visarga 4y ago
> Just because something is freely available does not magically make it "good." Just because you don't like it doesn't mean an open source chatGPT will not appear. It doesn't need everyone's permission to exist. Once we accumulated internet-scale datasets and gigantic supercomputers, immediately GPT-3's started to pop up. It was inevitable. It's an evolutionary process and we won't be able to control it at will. Probably the same process happens in every human who gains language faculty and a bit of experience. It's how language "inhabits" humans, carrying with it the work of previous generations. Now language can inhabit AIs as well, and the result is shocking. It's like our own mind staring back at us. But it is just natural evolution for language. It found an even more efficient replication device. Now it can contain and replicate the whole culture at once, instead of one human life at a time. By "language" I mean language itself, concepts, methods, science, art, culture and technology, and everything I forgot - the whole "corpus" of human experience recorded in text and media.
- consumer451 4y ago
  > It doesn't need everyone's permission to exist. Nope it does not. It does need a lot of people's help though and there may be enough out there to do the job in this case. Even though I knew this would be a highly unpopular opinion in this thread, I still posted it. Freedom of speech, right? The reason I posted it was to maybe give some pause to some people, so that they have a moment to consider the implications. I realize this is likely futile but this is a hill I am willing to die on. That hill being FOSS is not an escape from responsibility and consequences. I bet this leads to major regulation, which will suck.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    First. this is a moderated forum, you have no freedom of speech here, and neither do I. Next, regulation solves nothing here, and my guess will make the problems far worse. Why? Lets take nuclear weapons. They are insanely powerful, but they are highly regulated because there are a few choke points mostly in uranium refinement that make monitoring pretty easy at a global scale. The problem with regulating things like GPT is computation looks like computation. It's not sending high energy particles out into space where they can be monitored. Every government on the planet can easily and cheaply (compared to nukes) generate their own GPT models and propaganda weapons and the same goes for multinational corporations. Many countries in the EU may agree to regulate these things, but your dominant countries vying for superpower status aren't going to let their competitors one up each other by shutting down research into different forms of AI. I don't think of this as a hill we are going to die on, but instead a hill we may be killed on by our own creations.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
<< In the interest of curiosity and discussion, can someone give me some actual real-world examples of what a FOSS ChatGPT will enable that OpenAI's tool will not? And, please be specific, not just "no censorship." Please give examples of that censorship. I think the best I can go with is that it levels the playing field. This tool is likely already being adopted and adapted across the world by some overly excited people ( I am currently testing for personal use ). Just the idea that one company has access to all those prompts is a nightmare to me, because I am all but certain that some well meaning analyst dumped production data set into it for some relatively benign stuff like "address standardization" or "classification". To me, that shit is scary as fuck, but I know not everyone has the same internal moral compass or even corporate guidance. If there is one thing we learned over the past few decades, it is that centralized anything tends to end up being corrupted by powers that be. If information yearns to be free, this is likely the pinnacle of information -- a way for one person to make their own tool and use it as they see fit ( and face appropriate consequences as some will undoubtedly arise ).

leaving 4y ago

It genuinely astonishes me that you think that "centralized contol" of anything can be beneficial to the human species or the world in general. Centralized control hasn't stopped us from killing off half the animal species in fifty years, wiping out most of the insects, or turning the oceans into a trash heap. In fact, centralized control is the author of our destruction. We are all dead people walking. Why not try "individualized intelligence" as an alternative? Give truly good-quality universal education and encouragement of individual curiosity and independent thought a try? It can't be worse.

f6v 4y ago
> Centralized control hasn't stopped Because there wasn’t any.
consumer451 4y ago
> It genuinely astonishes me that you think that "centralized contol" of anything can be beneficial to the human species or the world in general. I am genuinely astonished that in the face of obvious examples such as nuclear weapons, people cannot see the opposite in some cases. > It can't be worse. It can always be worse. Would a theoretical FOSS small yield nuclear weapon make the world a better place? How about a FOSS powered sub-$10k hardware budget CRISPR virus lab? Well, it's FOSS, so it must be good?
- mandmandam 4y ago
  > I am genuinely astonished that in the face of obvious examples such as nuclear weapons, people cannot see the opposite in some cases. You seem to be making some large logical leaps, and jumping to invalid conclusions. Try to imagine a way of exerting regulation over virus research and weaponry that wouldn't be "centralized control". If you can't, that's a failure of imagination, not of decentralization.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    > Try to imagine a way of exerting regulation over virus research and weaponry that wouldn't be "centralized control". Since apparently my own imagination is too limited, could you please give me some examples of how this would be accomplished?
    - mandmandam 4y ago
      Trustless and decentralized systems are a hot topic. Have you read much in the field, to be so certain that centralization is the only way forward? There are options you haven't considered, whether you can imagine them or not.
      - consumer451 4y ago
        > Trustless and decentralized systems are a hot topic. Yeah, and how's that working out exactly? Is there any decentralized governance project which also has anything to do with law irl? I know what a DAO is, and it sounds pretty neat, in theory. There are all kinds of theoretical pie in the sky ideas which sound great and have yet to impact anything in reality. Before we give the keys to nukes and bioweapons over to a "decentralized authority," maybe we should see some examples of it working outside of the coin-go-up world? Heck, how about some examples of it working even in the coin-go-up world? Even pro-decentralized crypto folks see the downsides of DAOs, such as slower decision making.
- yazzku 4y ago
  Microsoft is not "reasonable people". Having this behind closed corporate walls is the worst possible outcome. The nuclear example isn't really a counter-argument. If only one nation had access to them, every other nation would automatically be subjugated to them. If the nuclear balance works, it's because multiple super powers have access to those weapons and international treaties regulate their use (as much as North Korea likes to demo practice rounds on state TV.) Also the technology isn't secret; it's access to resources and again, international treaties, that prevent its proliferation. Same thing with CRISPR. Again, there are scientific standards that regulate its use. It being open or not doesn't really matter to its proliferation. I agree there are cases where being open is not necessarily the best strategy. I don't think your examples are particularly good, though.

sterlind 4y ago

> In the interest of curiosity and discussion, can someone give me some actual real-world examples of what a FOSS ChatGPT will enable that OpenAI's tool will not? Smut. I've been trying to use ChatGPT to write erotica, but OpenAI has made it downright puritanical. Any conversations involving kink trip its guardrails unless I bypass them. Writing fiction that involves bad guys - arsonists, serial killers, etc. You need to ask how to hide a body if you're writing a murder mystery. Those are just some examples from my recent work.

consumer451 4y ago
Thanks, that's a good example. On the balance though, would I be in favor of ML auto-smut if it meant that more people will fall to misinformation in the form of propaganda and financial scams? No, that does not seem like a reasonable trade off to me. But you may be interested in this jailbreak while it lasts. I have gotten it to write all kinds of fun things. You will have to rework the jailbreak in the first comment, but I bet it works. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34642091

visarga 4y ago

> Just because something is freely available does not magically make it "good." Just because you don't like it doesn't mean an open source chatGPT will not appear. It doesn't need everyone's permission to exist. Once we accumulated internet-scale datasets and gigantic supercomputers, immediately GPT-3's started to pop up. It was inevitable. It's an evolutionary process and we won't be able to control it at will. Probably the same process happens in every human who gains language faculty and a bit of experience. It's how language "inhabits" humans, carrying with it the work of previous generations. Now language can inhabit AIs as well, and the result is shocking. It's like our own mind staring back at us. But it is just natural evolution for language. It found an even more efficient replication device. Now it can contain and replicate the whole culture at once, instead of one human life at a time. By "language" I mean language itself, concepts, methods, science, art, culture and technology, and everything I forgot - the whole "corpus" of human experience recorded in text and media.

consumer451 4y ago
> It doesn't need everyone's permission to exist. Nope it does not. It does need a lot of people's help though and there may be enough out there to do the job in this case. Even though I knew this would be a highly unpopular opinion in this thread, I still posted it. Freedom of speech, right? The reason I posted it was to maybe give some pause to some people, so that they have a moment to consider the implications. I realize this is likely futile but this is a hill I am willing to die on. That hill being FOSS is not an escape from responsibility and consequences. I bet this leads to major regulation, which will suck.
- pixl97 4y ago
  First. this is a moderated forum, you have no freedom of speech here, and neither do I. Next, regulation solves nothing here, and my guess will make the problems far worse. Why? Lets take nuclear weapons. They are insanely powerful, but they are highly regulated because there are a few choke points mostly in uranium refinement that make monitoring pretty easy at a global scale. The problem with regulating things like GPT is computation looks like computation. It's not sending high energy particles out into space where they can be monitored. Every government on the planet can easily and cheaply (compared to nukes) generate their own GPT models and propaganda weapons and the same goes for multinational corporations. Many countries in the EU may agree to regulate these things, but your dominant countries vying for superpower status aren't going to let their competitors one up each other by shutting down research into different forms of AI. I don't think of this as a hill we are going to die on, but instead a hill we may be killed on by our own creations.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

<< In the interest of curiosity and discussion, can someone give me some actual real-world examples of what a FOSS ChatGPT will enable that OpenAI's tool will not? And, please be specific, not just "no censorship." Please give examples of that censorship. I think the best I can go with is that it levels the playing field. This tool is likely already being adopted and adapted across the world by some overly excited people ( I am currently testing for personal use ). Just the idea that one company has access to all those prompts is a nightmare to me, because I am all but certain that some well meaning analyst dumped production data set into it for some relatively benign stuff like "address standardization" or "classification". To me, that shit is scary as fuck, but I know not everyone has the same internal moral compass or even corporate guidance. If there is one thing we learned over the past few decades, it is that centralized anything tends to end up being corrupted by powers that be. If information yearns to be free, this is likely the pinnacle of information -- a way for one person to make their own tool and use it as they see fit ( and face appropriate consequences as some will undoubtedly arise ).