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> who wants unfettered ability to interact with a LLM without moral concerns. Is that bad? It's just a language model - it says things. Humans have been saying

by ars 4y ago

> who wants unfettered ability to interact with a LLM without moral concerns. Is that bad? It's just a language model - it says things. Humans have been saying all sorts of terrible things for ages, and we are still here. I mean it makes for nice headline "model said something racist", but does it actually change anything? These aren't decision making AI's (which would need to be much more careful), they are language models.

aaomidi 4y ago
Humans don’t scale infinitely. Humans have agency.
- ars 4y ago
  And if the LLM scales infinitely it still does nothing unless a human reads and acts on it. And as you said: Humans don't scale, and have agency. Just writing something bad doesn't actually mean something bad happened. These days it seems like people are oversensitive to how things are said to them, and what things are said to them.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Wow. You just found the solution to propaganda! People just shouldn’t be sensitive!
    - chii 4y ago
      You jest, but the idea of critical thinking and rationalism is what you'd use to combat propaganda.
rzmmm 4y ago
The content it produces is quite hard to distinct from text written by real person. Not long ago, Facebook was accused of "playing a critical role" in Rohingya genocide. I dont really know but I believe worst case LLM risks are in that same category.
- ars 4y ago
  That doesn't answer the question. So what if it wrote text, vs a human wrote text. What matters is the reader not the writer. Facebook was accused of making it too easy for people to communicate. And people felt Facebook should police what people say to each other. I don't agree, but even if I did, that's not the same thing as what we are discussing.
- bostik 4y ago
  As much as I dislike FB, and I certainly abhor their activities related to the genocide - I think this is far too different. Rohingya is a textbook example of blind optimisation and lack of context awareness. FB looked at a region, and people communicating in language they didn't understand. But they did see that certain symbols and/or combinations of symbols got a lot of engagement. If you're after money, you want to amplify the use of those symbols and hopefully generate lots more similar content. Turns out that's a morally reprehensible thing when the people using those symbols were advocating genocide. (It was good for the revenue while it lasted, though.) With LLMs and their hardcoded guard rails, I suspect we're going to see the danger emerge from the other side. Instead of actively spewing hatred, they will be used for mass sock-puppetry and opinion amplification on a massive scale. Think simple sabotage field manual for 21st century, but weaponised thousand-fold.
selfhoster11 4y ago
They absolutely are decision making models. Prompt them right, and they will output a decision in natural language or structured JSON. Heck, hook them up to a judicial system and they can start making low quality decisions tomorrow.

by ars 4y ago

aaomidi 4y ago

Humans don’t scale infinitely. Humans have agency.

ars 4y ago
And if the LLM scales infinitely it still does nothing unless a human reads and acts on it. And as you said: Humans don't scale, and have agency. Just writing something bad doesn't actually mean something bad happened. These days it seems like people are oversensitive to how things are said to them, and what things are said to them.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Wow. You just found the solution to propaganda! People just shouldn’t be sensitive!
  - chii 4y ago
    You jest, but the idea of critical thinking and rationalism is what you'd use to combat propaganda.

rzmmm 4y ago

The content it produces is quite hard to distinct from text written by real person. Not long ago, Facebook was accused of "playing a critical role" in Rohingya genocide. I dont really know but I believe worst case LLM risks are in that same category.

ars 4y ago
That doesn't answer the question. So what if it wrote text, vs a human wrote text. What matters is the reader not the writer. Facebook was accused of making it too easy for people to communicate. And people felt Facebook should police what people say to each other. I don't agree, but even if I did, that's not the same thing as what we are discussing.
bostik 4y ago
As much as I dislike FB, and I certainly abhor their activities related to the genocide - I think this is far too different. Rohingya is a textbook example of blind optimisation and lack of context awareness. FB looked at a region, and people communicating in language they didn't understand. But they did see that certain symbols and/or combinations of symbols got a lot of engagement. If you're after money, you want to amplify the use of those symbols and hopefully generate lots more similar content. Turns out that's a morally reprehensible thing when the people using those symbols were advocating genocide. (It was good for the revenue while it lasted, though.) With LLMs and their hardcoded guard rails, I suspect we're going to see the danger emerge from the other side. Instead of actively spewing hatred, they will be used for mass sock-puppetry and opinion amplification on a massive scale. Think simple sabotage field manual for 21st century, but weaponised thousand-fold.

selfhoster11 4y ago

They absolutely are decision making models. Prompt them right, and they will output a decision in natural language or structured JSON. Heck, hook them up to a judicial system and they can start making low quality decisions tomorrow.