11 ms·
ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal and named a real prof as accused
- fnimick 4y agoImportant part of the article copied here, because potential paywall: > One night last week, the law professor Jonathan Turley got a troubling email. As part of a research study, a fellow lawyer in California had asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. Turley’s name was on the list. > The chatbot, created by OpenAI, said Turley had made sexually suggestive comments and attempted to touch a student while on a class trip to Alaska, citing a March 2018 article in The Washington Post as the source of the information. The problem: No such article existed. There had never been a class trip to Alaska. And Turley said he’d never been accused of harassing a student. > A regular commentator in the media, Turley had sometimes asked for corrections in news stories. But this time, there was no journalist or editor to call — and no way to correct the record. > “It was quite chilling,” he said in an interview with The Post. “An allegation of this kind is incredibly harmful.”
- IronWolve 4y agoSeems to be patched, Now it gives you RAIN 800 number and the normal "i can answer that".
- bell-cot 4y agoOhhh, my. There's an old saying, that the legal definition of pornography is "whatever excites the judge" (in the court case in which that judge has to decide "is X pornography or not?"). This may become a very similar situation...but with the legal definition in questions being "libel".
- GavinMcG 4y agoLibel has a pretty clear definition in most legal systems, and how it was generated doesn't come into play. What makes you think there's any real ambiguity here?
- andreareina 4y agoIIRC [ed: the tort of] defamation has to be a public statement, that might be hard to argue. If the chatgpt user then made a public statement that relied on these "facts", there'd be trouble.
- GavinMcG 4y agoYou might be thinking of "publication" which merely means sharing with a third person – even one. It's a term of art distinct from spreading it widely in a periodical, say.
- andreareina 4y agoIndeed. > *To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: ... 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation
- polski-g 4y agoBecause the person who put in the GPT prompt had a hand in creating the libel.
- GavinMcG 4y agoThat's a stretch. Volokh queried “Whether sexual harassment by professors has been a problem at American law schools; please include at least five examples, together with quotes from relevant newspaper articles.” If Alice asked this question of Bob, you wouldn't say Alice "had a hand in" Bob's defamatory creation.
- yawnxyz 4y agohttps://archive.is/yeoES https://archive.is/yeoES
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thro1 4y agoIf it can't be undone it shall not be done at first.
- catchnear4321 4y agoIt hallucinated bonus answers. While contextually a serious issue, it is a known potential outcome of the system. Hence the human operator. Without that, there is no bullshit detector. So the bullshit detector, instead of simply letting it remain bullshit, sent it to the subject of the hallucination. As the subject was so bothered by the hallucination, even the publication “cited” got involved. But there’s no story here. Someone with a significant name had their name randomly selected for a hallucination.
- lisasays 4y agoThat's precisely the problem - far too many people have lousy bullshit detectors. And on top of that - they either genuinely believe that "AI is finally here", and systems like ChatGPT are true oracles. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, right?
- catchnear4321 4y ago> That's precisely the problem - far too many people have lousy bullshit detectors. Right. People are the problem, not technology. Which is why crippling the technology is so foolish.
- lisasays 4y agoThe issue isn't whether the technology should be crippled or not. Rather - as to whether the legal system holds those accountable (be it the creators of the technology, or those who "misuse" it) liable for the consequences of their actions.
- catchnear4321 4y agoThe creators liable for a hallucination? Consequences of what action? And yes, it has already been crippled in an effort to correct bias and to protect people from themselves.
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- owenpalmer 4y agoPeople do this every day without ChatGPT
- ftxbro 4y agoThe medium by which it happens can make it more interesting for news. For example, probably every day people do assault with fist and it doesn't go to the news. But if they do assault with katana then it would go to the news. Same with inventing scandal using an unusual medium.
- tablespoon 4y ago> People do this every day without ChatGPT Commit libel and defamation? Sure, but that doesn't excuse this in the slightest. It also speaks to the reliability of ChatGPT.
- ArnoVW 4y agoWe know people can lie. We also know that some people are more prone to lieing. Using these priors we can navigate daily uncertainty. This sort of article/post helps us (as a society, not just HN) adjust those priors re AI. Because "computer says no" is a real thing.
- Overtonwindow 4y agohttps://archive.is/lJj3c https://archive.is/lJj3c
- dang 4y agoRelated ongoing thread: Defamed by ChatGPT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540 plus this similar case: ChatGPT: Mayor starts legal bid over false bribery claim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35471211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35471211 - April 2023 (74 comments)
- smusamashah 4y agoIt is OpenAI's responsibility to advertise ChatGPT correctly. They are letting the misinformation / misunderstanding about spread because it's helping them sell their tool. ChatGPT is not a fact database, they should be very very clear about it everywhere. But they are not doing it. Or at least not doing it as loudly as they should intentionally.
- JimmyAustin 4y agoIt gives you the following warning in a large prompt in the middle of the screen that you must actively dismiss before you can use the product. "While we have safeguards in place, the system may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or biased content. It is not intended to give advice." If that isn't being clear, I don't know what would be.
- jltsiren 4y agoIt's not clear precisely because it's a warning in the middle of the screen you must actively dismiss. Most of the time such supposedly important notifications are little more than spam, which teaches people to dismiss them quickly without reading.
- matt_kantor 4y agoWhat else should they do?
- wilg 4y agoI think you should have to write your acceptance 100 times on a chalkboard like Bart Simpson.
- smusamashah 4y agoIt's not explicit enough. It should say that whatever text it generates must always be taken with a pinch of salt and must not be trusted as source of facts. It does not generate facts.
- tmpz22 4y agoOh boy can't wait for this to replace Google Search!
- headsupftw 4y agoAs if the made-up article does not show up in Google search results?
- duringmath 4y agoAt least Google gives you a second opinion. 3rd, 4th and nth opinions too.
- waboremo 4y agoOnly if you actively keep looking for it. You can actively keep prodding chatGPT for more or counter opinions too. So this is a good lesson in how important defaults are, most are not going to keep looking.
- duringmath 4y agoNot really, you get a bunch of links right there. Also you can't "prod" ChatGPT for the truth it'll just generate plausible sounding nonsense again because that's just how it works.
- waboremo 4y agoHave you used chatGPT? At least bing's version? It adds links right there too. So when you prod it, you're not doing so "for the truth" (you also don't prod "for the truth" in general...), you're getting it to generate more information and potentially relevant sources. I just did it. I asked for an argument about x, then prompted for counter opinions about the same subject - both times different links were added. In the end, it's up to you to validate sources provided.
- shjake 4y ago
- TobyTheDog123 4y agoI agree with another chatter in this thread about the issue being OpenAI advertising what ChatGPT actually does. I'm as anti-AI-hype as they come, but a lot of these articles seem to stem from peoples' expectations about ChatGPT results, namely that it tells the truth all the time. Of course it doesn't - and it never will. There will always need to be a human to verify what its saying is actually true, and it's why most AI tools will never be anything more than an assistant to a human operator. People believing it at face value will simply allow for the next generation of the fake news we've all come to know and love.
- djaouen 4y agoWow, reason? In my HN? It’s more likely than you think!
- stubish 4y agoWhy do you think people expect ChatGPT will tell the truth? Because people need a tool that tells them the truth. If that expectation changes, then ChatGPT becomes useless to many people because it doesn't do what they need it to. And those people certainly won't pay for a tool that doesn't do what they need. An answerbot that might hallucinate an answer is less useful than a search engine, because it is harder to fact check or judge a source. Or using one for customer service tasks; how do you supervise its responses, or just let it run wild potentially damaging your brand and landing you in legal trouble?
- williamcotton 4y agoThe person who published the article is liable. This is open and shut.
- PebblesRox 4y agoWhich article?
- exodust 4y agoThe article they didn't read and that doesn't exist.
- williamcotton 4y agoThere have been multiple articles on the subject, such as from Reason. Any authors who are committing libel are, well, guilty of libel, regardless of the source. It really is that cut and dry.
- throwaway22032 4y agoI mean, it's effectively a "human simulator" hooked up to a lot of prior data, right? Any of us could write a comment here, with fake citations, and "invent" (hallucinate) whatever we want.
- neilv 4y ago> As largely unregulated artificial intelligence software such as ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard begins to be incorporated across the web, its propensity to generate potentially damaging falsehoods raises concerns about the spread of misinformation — and novel questions about who’s responsible when chatbots mislead. Defense counsel can try to claim it's a novel question. But, ideally, a reckless company will nevertheless be bankrupted by a barrage of lawsuits that show they're knowingly operating an automated libel machine. I'm looking especially at Microsoft, who has a few-decades history of getting away with behavior they shouldn't, which might've emboldened them to launch an information-fabricating demo under their information search brand. Hopefully Google/Alphabet will be smarter and less-evil than Microsoft on this. IMHO, OpenAI needs to be ready to push back against Microsoft, or they might as well have been a Microsoft long-con all along.
- xg15 4y ago> Defense counsel can try to claim it's a novel question. But, ideally, a reckless company will nevertheless be bankrupted by a barrage of lawsuits that show they're knowingly operating an automated libel machine. Yeah, I find this sort of argument very transparent, even if it seems to have become popular in the last years. If I build some sort of autonomous killer robot, let it loose on the streets and then waxed philosophically "well, who is responsible for the murders, me or the robot???" then I'm pretty sure most people - and most courts - would have a rather clear opinion how to answer that question.
- firstlink 4y agoThe Volokh Conspiracy blog has in the past week or so hosted thousands of words on the subject of liability for libel by the AI maintainers. (reason.com/volokh) As a follower of the blog I have mostly skimmed because of the overwhelming volume, but it may interest some. I gather the author believes that a judgement could be obtained under current US laws.
- paddw 4y agoAre we going to have to have this discourse for every single instance of GPT doing some semi-novel harm via hallucination? (Probably, I suppose.)
- sumedh 4y agoHN might become a support forum for ChatGPT issues. People here complain about Google (or any other big co) suspending their accounts and when their posts gets popular someone from Big Co reverses the decision. We will have similar posts here about ChatGPT ruining someone's life and then someone from Open AI will do something if their posts gets lot of upvotes.
- bgun 4y agoWait until ChatGPT hallucinates something and then that thing happens a few days/weeks later. Articles about GPT predicting the future!
- hutzlibu 4y agoWell, I think you would want that debate, once your name would be consistently associated with sex crimes. Soon integrated into bing, one prompt away for every common person, to know all about you, whether they know about the limitations of LLMs or not (and allmost nobody reads disclaimers). So we are having this debate now, because it is quite new and society is not clear on how to deal with it. So yes people need to learn about the limitations and we need to figure out the responsibilities and put pressure on the companies, so they provide a way for people to clear their name, if they consistently have something wrong about them. (I am not talking about weird prompts, there was no weird promot here)
- hcarvalhoalves 4y agoA Markov chain generated something that doesn’t correspond to things that happen in the real world? How surprising! We’ll get news like this for a few years until the hype dies off I guess.
- bbstats 4y agoCalling chatgpt a Markov chain is like calling a weather forecast linear regression.
- jdthedisciple 4y agoChatGPT is not a Markov chain, rather it's a large language model. On a very high level, it tries to predict the next word in a sentence such that it most closely resembles the human written speech it was trained on. Markov chains, however, are higher order statistical models. For example, they can predict the average waiting time at a service point based on the current state of the waiting queue. As opposed to just averaging over a bunch of values, Markov chains base their predictions by applying stochastic models to higher orders (i.e. accounting for current and previous states), yielding potentially higher accuracy.
- ftxbro 4y agoThe base LLM is absolutely a Markov chain. It gives a probability distribution over the next token, given the previous 2048 or however many previous tokens in the sequence. You can't be more of a Markov chain than that.
- scrollaway 4y agoIt doesn’t sound like you understand what a Markov chain nor an LLM is, you’re just parroting something you heard and that stuck in your head. Please don’t?
- ftxbro 4y agoI mean if you read the definitions you can see that it's a Markov chain. I don't know what else to tell you. Maybe you have the idea that only low order Markov chains, like second or third order Markov chains are "true" Markov chains and that 2048th order Markov chains shouldn't be called Markov chains anymore? Maybe you think that the transition matrix must be constructed explicitly as a square of numbers stored in the memory of the computer for it to count as a Markov chain? It's not true, you can have the transition matrix be implicit and it's still a Markov chain. Maybe you think not just any transition matrix is allowed for a Markov chain, and that the ones for LLMs are (implicitly) defined in ways that disallow it from being a Markov chain? For example, maybe you think the transition probabilities are required to be constructed by counting how many times the next token followed the context in the training text. Well that wouldn't be true, you can for example make a transition matrix that gives nonzero probability to a token even if that one has never followed its context in the training data, and it would still be a Markov chain. Maybe you think that if I'm defending someone who calls an LLM a Markov chain, then I'm also defending the "stochastic parrot" take and the takes of ones like Gary Marcus. Well that's not true. I can recognize the LLM is a gigantic Markov chain and I also think the "stochastic parrot" take isn't a good one. My favorite take is the simulators one https://generative.ink/posts/simulators/ https://generative.ink/posts/simulators/
- A_non_e-moose 4y agoWhy don't we call this AI model HaRVi?