4 ms·

I don't understand, is this just saying that someone put prompts into GPT, and it spit out a specific person's name in the weird fairy tale it created? Why doe

by moate 4y ago

I don't understand, is this just saying that someone put prompts into GPT, and it spit out a specific person's name in the weird fairy tale it created? Why does this make AI the problem, and not the internet (and it's ability to spread information quickly)? This seems like a case against Twitter/reddit for being able to pass bs off as a reliable story. The fact that AI can make lazy trolls able to compete with actual propagandists shouldn't be the scary part, the digital ecosystem of how (dis)information spreads is the real issue. TL;dr- Anyone has been able to lie on the internet for years, what is new here?

aubanel 4y ago
When you have threats spreading, the spread of each individual threat is an issue, but their diversity as well: if each of these is a shiny new and different instance, it's much harder to identify them. So both multiplicity and spread are a problem: Internet is the cause for the limitless spread, AI is creating the limitless multiplicity.
- moate 4y ago
  Again: Seems like the propagandists complaining that we've democratized misinformation. The state and powerful orgs/individuals has always had the resources to do this at scales large enough to be effective.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    This is not good! This is like saying that since the state has always had the capacity to manufacture Sarin, why are we concerned about democratizing its manufacture to everyone?
    - moate 4y ago
      Take it more like Marx saying “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”. I don't like the status quo. If something will burn the whole system down faster, I'm fine with it. If you disagree with that stance, that's reasonable and I'm sure we could debate it over a beer sometime but (just a tip for anyone else reading it) you're not going to convince me here. Again, the problem here isn't the ability to make up lies, the problem is the internet (the ability to spread lies quickly and over great distances) and people being unwilling or unable to fact check information. It's not the sarin you need to fear, it's the bombers that can drop it.
      - fnimick 4y ago
        People who want to "burn the whole system down" rarely have any empathy for those who will get burned along with it. What about all the women, minorities, LGBTQ people, poor people, etc. who would suffer along the way? Shame on you.
        moate 4y ago
        What about them? They're suffering already. The system was built up to keep power away from the unwashed masses and in the hands of a well financed few. Why do you think the electoral college exists? Why do you think we have a Senate? You want to talk politics sometime, I'm not very hard to find online, come at me on at forum where I'm not rate limited because I'm a firebrand.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    How is this democratized when it’s a tool controlled by a single entity?
rhino369 4y ago
The article explains the problems. AI proponents want to use these systems to censor. And it leads to major companies like Microsoft slandering people. Microsoft should be afraid about that.
- moate 4y ago
  Censorship is the problem here, not AI, title is misleading (this doesn't meet the legal definition of Libel or Defamation anywhere, ever).
  - leephillips 4y ago
    If Bing tells me that Turley did bad stuff that he didn’t do, how is that not libel by Microsoft?
    - mrunkel 4y ago
      Because there was no intent to harm, which is a component of libel.
      - leephillips 4y ago
        No, it is not. If there is any state where this is necessary to sustain an action for libel, please link to the relevant statute. Note: I am not a lawyer, but I was sued for libel by radio health weirdo Gary Null and, in a separate action, by his sidekick. They lost.
    - hunter2_ 4y ago
      Because you used "Microsoft’s Bing, which is powered by GPT-4" (quoting TFA) and GPT-4 is designed to generate copy that is not to be interpreted as entirely true or entirely false, it's simply to be interpreted as humanlike.
      - leephillips 4y ago
        Maybe. But I’m not sure. If I write an article, and say up top that the article may contain made-up stuff, then later down I say, “hunter2_ likes to have sex with walruses, it’s a fact. Here’s a link to a Washington Post article with all the gory details,” it’s not clear that pointing to my disclaimer would indemnify me from liability for harm that came to you from the walrus allegation, if people believed and acted on it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 4y ago
If you publish a lie on the Internet, you may be liable for libel. The bar for this is extremely high in the United States, but much less so in other places, especially the UK. Now, under what circumstances is someone deemed the "publisher" when an AI emits a libel about someone? What if that leads to actual damages? (e.g. a no-hire decision based on automated libel)?
- moate 4y ago
  >>Now, under what circumstances is someone deemed the "publisher" when an AI emits a libel about someone? What if that leads to actual damages? (e.g. a no-hire decision based on automated libel)? Only novel point anyone (including the Author of the original point) is actually bringing up! So far, the bots just seem to be 1:1. If I DM'd my wife that "pjc50 is a raging alcoholic and hits kittens" that's not usually going to be deemed libel (in the US, where I reside and care about the legality of things) unless my wife then goes out and uses that to cause harm (published it on her blog and got you fired). As for now, Turley would have a HELL of a time proving actual harm unless he got the most sympathetic judge he could shop for, and is mostly just scaremongering the idea of "Liberal Censorship!!!!" which, don't get me wrong, I would also strongly oppose (fuck all censorship), but which isn't actually what is happening.
dcanelhas 4y ago
If someone lies in a way that constitutes liebel, even online, one could have them brought to justice - potentially. With an LLM or a diffusion model - If it produces illegal content who is to be held accountable? I think that is a perhaps meaningful distinction.
posterboy 4y ago
The Professor is in a good position to (decide if to) sue somebody. From the headlines I thought that's what this is about, because otherwise the headline should suffice with Professor minus "Law". Of course there is precedent eg. with Techno Viking, a "meme" which is also difficult to attribute to a single person (but each individual hoster who neglects the man's rights). That's not new, but that it generates news "because AI" is not surprising. People just need reminded that people oughta be reponsible. The issue is broader because incomprehensible neural networks are also used in eg. thread recognition. So employers may be worried about accountability, how much manual verification is needed. Of course this too is nothing new, since all kinds of software has security holes buried under layers of complexity. You might simply be under the missapprehension that news means new: »Meaning "tidings, intelligence of something that has lately taken place" is from early 15c.« (etymonline). It fits that the root of the word is probably related to "now". In Latin, whence the English word was loaned as a calque of nova, there is another word nuntius "messenger, message", which isn't even derived directly from novus. Surely this is not a supernova to you. Talk about recurrent networks, eh. Just saying, as it were, the news item flared up because many many people have taken notice of problems that we barely understand.
- moate 4y ago
  I'll just say this, if a political law professor who makes a substantial income from thinkpieces and talking head segments had a legitimate case to take on his political opponents ("liberal technologists" in this case as the fearmongering at the end of his article indicates) and was actually in a good position to sue someone, they would. This is not like the Technoviking, as that was about image rights and not slanderous copy, and ChatGPT isn't publishing anything that it (or its creators) alleges are exclusively facts. This is closer to 1st amendment protections around satire as the Chat GPT page says itself the software is in a "research phase". Once the assumption is placed that this is a source of objectively factual information (like say, a newspaper) THEN you have grounds, but this is a pretty weak defamation argument. He's not in a place to sue, so he's writing a blog post about how he hates liberal censorship, and since AI is a hot new trend, he included it. This is a mixture of buzzfeed-esque hyperbolic clickbait titling, and classic "this new technology will get interest" article building. There are 2 problems being mentioned in this article: Misinformation, and Censorship. We understand both very well, there's just a million opinions on them and many conflict in both cause and course of action. Finally, this is "news" because it presents a common problem in society: Policy and political interests bumping against new technology they don't understand and can barely describe in function. This man is still a fucking clownshow (IMHO, so as to not be sued for libel).

by moate 4y ago

aubanel 4y ago

When you have threats spreading, the spread of each individual threat is an issue, but their diversity as well: if each of these is a shiny new and different instance, it's much harder to identify them. So both multiplicity and spread are a problem: Internet is the cause for the limitless spread, AI is creating the limitless multiplicity.

moate 4y ago
Again: Seems like the propagandists complaining that we've democratized misinformation. The state and powerful orgs/individuals has always had the resources to do this at scales large enough to be effective.
- pjc50 4y ago
  This is not good! This is like saying that since the state has always had the capacity to manufacture Sarin, why are we concerned about democratizing its manufacture to everyone?
  - moate 4y ago
    Take it more like Marx saying “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”. I don't like the status quo. If something will burn the whole system down faster, I'm fine with it. If you disagree with that stance, that's reasonable and I'm sure we could debate it over a beer sometime but (just a tip for anyone else reading it) you're not going to convince me here. Again, the problem here isn't the ability to make up lies, the problem is the internet (the ability to spread lies quickly and over great distances) and people being unwilling or unable to fact check information. It's not the sarin you need to fear, it's the bombers that can drop it.
    - fnimick 4y ago
      People who want to "burn the whole system down" rarely have any empathy for those who will get burned along with it. What about all the women, minorities, LGBTQ people, poor people, etc. who would suffer along the way? Shame on you.
      - moate 4y ago
        What about them? They're suffering already. The system was built up to keep power away from the unwashed masses and in the hands of a well financed few. Why do you think the electoral college exists? Why do you think we have a Senate? You want to talk politics sometime, I'm not very hard to find online, come at me on at forum where I'm not rate limited because I'm a firebrand.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  How is this democratized when it’s a tool controlled by a single entity?

rhino369 4y ago

The article explains the problems. AI proponents want to use these systems to censor. And it leads to major companies like Microsoft slandering people. Microsoft should be afraid about that.

moate 4y ago
Censorship is the problem here, not AI, title is misleading (this doesn't meet the legal definition of Libel or Defamation anywhere, ever).
- leephillips 4y ago
  If Bing tells me that Turley did bad stuff that he didn’t do, how is that not libel by Microsoft?
  - mrunkel 4y ago
    Because there was no intent to harm, which is a component of libel.
    - leephillips 4y ago
      No, it is not. If there is any state where this is necessary to sustain an action for libel, please link to the relevant statute. Note: I am not a lawyer, but I was sued for libel by radio health weirdo Gary Null and, in a separate action, by his sidekick. They lost.
  - hunter2_ 4y ago
    Because you used "Microsoft’s Bing, which is powered by GPT-4" (quoting TFA) and GPT-4 is designed to generate copy that is not to be interpreted as entirely true or entirely false, it's simply to be interpreted as humanlike.
    - leephillips 4y ago
      Maybe. But I’m not sure. If I write an article, and say up top that the article may contain made-up stuff, then later down I say, “hunter2_ likes to have sex with walruses, it’s a fact. Here’s a link to a Washington Post article with all the gory details,” it’s not clear that pointing to my disclaimer would indemnify me from liability for harm that came to you from the walrus allegation, if people believed and acted on it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 4y ago

If you publish a lie on the Internet, you may be liable for libel. The bar for this is extremely high in the United States, but much less so in other places, especially the UK. Now, under what circumstances is someone deemed the "publisher" when an AI emits a libel about someone? What if that leads to actual damages? (e.g. a no-hire decision based on automated libel)?

moate 4y ago
>>Now, under what circumstances is someone deemed the "publisher" when an AI emits a libel about someone? What if that leads to actual damages? (e.g. a no-hire decision based on automated libel)? Only novel point anyone (including the Author of the original point) is actually bringing up! So far, the bots just seem to be 1:1. If I DM'd my wife that "pjc50 is a raging alcoholic and hits kittens" that's not usually going to be deemed libel (in the US, where I reside and care about the legality of things) unless my wife then goes out and uses that to cause harm (published it on her blog and got you fired). As for now, Turley would have a HELL of a time proving actual harm unless he got the most sympathetic judge he could shop for, and is mostly just scaremongering the idea of "Liberal Censorship!!!!" which, don't get me wrong, I would also strongly oppose (fuck all censorship), but which isn't actually what is happening.

dcanelhas 4y ago

If someone lies in a way that constitutes liebel, even online, one could have them brought to justice - potentially. With an LLM or a diffusion model - If it produces illegal content who is to be held accountable? I think that is a perhaps meaningful distinction.

posterboy 4y ago

The Professor is in a good position to (decide if to) sue somebody. From the headlines I thought that's what this is about, because otherwise the headline should suffice with Professor minus "Law". Of course there is precedent eg. with Techno Viking, a "meme" which is also difficult to attribute to a single person (but each individual hoster who neglects the man's rights). That's not new, but that it generates news "because AI" is not surprising. People just need reminded that people oughta be reponsible. The issue is broader because incomprehensible neural networks are also used in eg. thread recognition. So employers may be worried about accountability, how much manual verification is needed. Of course this too is nothing new, since all kinds of software has security holes buried under layers of complexity. You might simply be under the missapprehension that news means new: »Meaning "tidings, intelligence of something that has lately taken place" is from early 15c.« (etymonline). It fits that the root of the word is probably related to "now". In Latin, whence the English word was loaned as a calque of nova, there is another word nuntius "messenger, message", which isn't even derived directly from novus. Surely this is not a supernova to you. Talk about recurrent networks, eh. Just saying, as it were, the news item flared up because many many people have taken notice of problems that we barely understand.

moate 4y ago
I'll just say this, if a political law professor who makes a substantial income from thinkpieces and talking head segments had a legitimate case to take on his political opponents ("liberal technologists" in this case as the fearmongering at the end of his article indicates) and was actually in a good position to sue someone, they would. This is not like the Technoviking, as that was about image rights and not slanderous copy, and ChatGPT isn't publishing anything that it (or its creators) alleges are exclusively facts. This is closer to 1st amendment protections around satire as the Chat GPT page says itself the software is in a "research phase". Once the assumption is placed that this is a source of objectively factual information (like say, a newspaper) THEN you have grounds, but this is a pretty weak defamation argument. He's not in a place to sue, so he's writing a blog post about how he hates liberal censorship, and since AI is a hot new trend, he included it. This is a mixture of buzzfeed-esque hyperbolic clickbait titling, and classic "this new technology will get interest" article building. There are 2 problems being mentioned in this article: Misinformation, and Censorship. We understand both very well, there's just a million opinions on them and many conflict in both cause and course of action. Finally, this is "news" because it presents a common problem in society: Policy and political interests bumping against new technology they don't understand and can barely describe in function. This man is still a fucking clownshow (IMHO, so as to not be sued for libel).