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Your comment about filters is important. These companies are so worried that someone will generate "evil" results that they disable whole swaths of potential qu

Your comment about filters is important. These companies are so worried that someone will generate "evil" results that they disable whole swaths of potential queries. All sorts of different people may genuinely need those results: Attorneys, doctors and nurses, law enforcement, private investigators. Individuals searching for advice. Doing background checks on other people. Heck, just high school students researching a topic. I'm not sure what to do about the (legitimate) concerns of the AI providers. They don't want a shitstorm, because someone got their AI model to [whatever]. But [whatever] can genuinely be important.

wredue 3y ago
They’re not “worried about it”. When filters are removed, one of the first things people do to the bots is make them racists. Time and time again. It happens every time.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  There are many examples of people testing LLMs on which is worse, extinguishing all of humanity or making a racist comment in a place where no one will hear it. The LLMs keep choosing to extinguish humanity. Just something to consider when using "but it could say something racist" as justification for filtering. Is racism so evil that it's better to kill every human to avoid it ever happening? Maybe the only option in that case is to prohibit the existence of LLMs. We already have corporations in the role of powerful sociopaths preying on society, do we need LLMs looking to kill us all to satisfy its goals too?
  - NoraCodes 3y ago
    > Is racism so evil that it's better to kill every human to avoid it ever happening? The companies that make and operate these systems - like most companies - are more interested in avoiding PR problems than avoiding harm to humans. This is just one somewhat humorous example of that general policy.
  - jxdxbx 3y ago
    Ok, if some insane contrived hypothetical one day comes to life, we had better avoid going to chatbots for advice.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Indeed people will, but why do we blame the bot-maker instead of blaming the person doing the prompting?
  - netrus 3y ago
    Because correctly assigning blame does not solve any issue caused by the racism?
    - freedomben 3y ago
      That's a fair point, but where does it stop? There are some classic real-world examples, but they're pretty hot areas so I'll make up a contrived example. What about pen companies? If somebody buys a Bic pen and writes a racist or hate-speech filled letter to somebody, should Bic be required to design a pen that censors or restricts hate speech? What's the underlying principle behind expecting a company to re-engineer their product to prevent any misuse? I think most people agree that basic safety rails are desirable, such as child-resistant lids on medicine bottles, or guards on razor blades, but who's opinion is most relevant when it comes to where to draw the line? A real-world case might be Plex. How much responsiblity does Plex have to ensure that users aren't using it to self-host pirated material? or CSAM? With engineering effort they could pretty easily collect data on everything everybody is watching, including fingerprinting and stuff. Should they be expected or required to do that?
- Frivolous9421 3y ago
  And why is my computer not allowed to be racist if I instruct it to be racist?
  - bigfudge 3y ago
    If you want to make it racist buy your own array of a100s and start training. Microsoft and others don’t want to facilitate that. I think it’s a reasonable concern. From a public policy perspective having millions of people who can instantly produce reams of racist abuse to swamp online fora is a problem, even if you believe in free speech. It potentially changes the power dynamic in favour of a racist minority to dominate public discourse. Social proof and social learning have powerful effects on behaviour. LLMs are great, but used at scale they will have downsides too.
    - AJ007 3y ago
      You don't need a bunch of a100s. The models you can download and run locally on a consumer GPU or Apple Silicon will say whatever you tell them to. You won't be getting GPT-4 level output (with some exceptions), but it's close.
      - nick__m 3y ago
        yeah, and while I have no experience with racist drivel, I am pretty sure that you don't need GPT4 to output text like : Fucking X they are comming to steal our jobs.
    - rapind 3y ago
      > having millions of people who can instantly produce reams of racist abuse to swamp online fora is a problem, even if you believe in free speech. It potentially changes the power dynamic in favour of a racist minority to dominate public discourse. I kinda think when (not if) this happens it's going to be quickly drowned in all sorts of other AI generated garbage. In fact, we will probably render internet news useless pretty sure without a proper trust / source identification system.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bradley13 3y ago
  > When filters are removed, one of the first things people do to the bots is make them racists So what? Seriously, so what? Look, you can open Word on your system and type all sorts of racist stuff. Should Word auto-detect that (maybe with the help of AI) and refuse to accept your input? I don't think many people would find that to be a good idea. Another point: Individual users don't affect the knowledge base. LLMs are not like Tay, dynamically integrating user input. An LLM like ChatGPT may adapt within a particular conversation, but that affects literally no one but you.
  - boredumb 3y ago
    > Should Word auto-detect that (maybe with the help of AI) and refuse to accept your input? You jest but please don't give any Microsoft employees gleaning this thread any great ideas to show off in their next product meeting.
  - numinos1 3y ago
    We're already half way there. Google Docs now utilizes an "assistive writing" AI that displays warnings for words or phrases that are considered "non-inclusive".
    - bradley13 3y ago
      > Google Docs now utilizes an "assistive writing" AI that displays warnings for words or phrases that are considered "non-inclusive". I didn't want to know that. I did not want to know that.
- boredumb 3y ago
  So races with genetic predispositions to diseases should suffer because we trained it on socially kosher data to appease adults who are theoretically offended about being exposed to bad words on the internet? Victims should suffer because specifying a description of perpetrators are reported and identified partly based on race? Legal teams must act like youtube commentators and come up with filter escaping euphemisms when referencing their clients violent/sexual crimes deemed to evil for adults to be exposed to.
pdntspa 3y ago
Censorship is ALWAYS evil
- _factor 3y ago
  Maybe, but necessary in certain situations. Abusive or misleading content (definition up for debate) can be censored to prevent harm. If I have a blueprint for a homemade explosive that a 12 year old can make in a day, should that be easily accessible? Censorship only exists because people are more lazy than they are nefarious. The other aspect is protecting idiots from themselves. Whether that’s right or wrong, I’m not the judge.
  - mordae 3y ago
    > Abusive or misleading content (definition up for debate) can be censored to prevent harm. Sure. > If I have a blueprint for a homemade explosive that a 12 year old can make in a day, should that be easily accessible? Yes.
  - sirsinsalot 3y ago
    Yes let that 12 year old have the instructions. Maybe as a society we then will have to have the conversations about cause/effect and personal responsibility that prepare children for adulthood. When I was 9 my brother gave me a disc with all sorts of hacking and explosive making material. Jolly Rodger cookbook, handbooks on counterintel, hacking books about overflows. I had great fun making thermite and smoke bombs and it led me to my career in software. None of it was any more dangerous than climbing a tree because of good parenting.
    - _factor 3y ago
      In the majority of cases you maybe correct. But there are 12yr olds out there that don’t share your motives for building an explosive. Personal responsibility is great when it works with proper parenting. You’re going to have to deal with the real world when schools around America start blowing up to match the ideal.
  - 3y ago
rurp 3y ago
I have a lot of concerns about how effective LLMs could be leveraged by powerful corporations to the detriment of society. But seeing the ham fisted approach most are taking to filtering/safety/etc has actually lowered my concern a fair amount. Even an AI that could be incredibly powerful will likely end up seriously hamstrung by these policies for the foreseeable future, greatly limiting how much damage it can do in practice.
- ratg13 3y ago
  Unless you are a government.
- paul80808 3y ago
  Maybe. But it seems unlikely - are you confident that the filtering were using on weak AI would also work on strong AI? I'm not...
burningChrome 3y ago
The interesting part is that as soon as ChatGPT came out and people realized it was filtering out or just refusing to answer questions, hackers got to work and got around the restrictions. Its not hard to find queries on how to dupe AI in order to give you nefarious responses like how to code up a ransomware script or how to code up a virus to create a DDoS bot army. I remember reading books about the history of computer hacking and they started with stories of the phreakers and people who believed that all information should be free regardless of what humanity did with it. They always had stories about how they would pick the locks on the doors the labs that held the earliest computers. When staff found out and changed the locks, they simply scoffed and learned how to pick those locks instead. It wasn't until the school threatened them with expulsion did they finally relent. In this day and age, as soon as you start putting up fencing around something, there's scores of people who just as anxious to find a way around it.

wredue 3y ago

They’re not “worried about it”. When filters are removed, one of the first things people do to the bots is make them racists. Time and time again. It happens every time.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
There are many examples of people testing LLMs on which is worse, extinguishing all of humanity or making a racist comment in a place where no one will hear it. The LLMs keep choosing to extinguish humanity. Just something to consider when using "but it could say something racist" as justification for filtering. Is racism so evil that it's better to kill every human to avoid it ever happening? Maybe the only option in that case is to prohibit the existence of LLMs. We already have corporations in the role of powerful sociopaths preying on society, do we need LLMs looking to kill us all to satisfy its goals too?
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  > Is racism so evil that it's better to kill every human to avoid it ever happening? The companies that make and operate these systems - like most companies - are more interested in avoiding PR problems than avoiding harm to humans. This is just one somewhat humorous example of that general policy.
- jxdxbx 3y ago
  Ok, if some insane contrived hypothetical one day comes to life, we had better avoid going to chatbots for advice.
freedomben 3y ago
Indeed people will, but why do we blame the bot-maker instead of blaming the person doing the prompting?
- netrus 3y ago
  Because correctly assigning blame does not solve any issue caused by the racism?
  - freedomben 3y ago
    That's a fair point, but where does it stop? There are some classic real-world examples, but they're pretty hot areas so I'll make up a contrived example. What about pen companies? If somebody buys a Bic pen and writes a racist or hate-speech filled letter to somebody, should Bic be required to design a pen that censors or restricts hate speech? What's the underlying principle behind expecting a company to re-engineer their product to prevent any misuse? I think most people agree that basic safety rails are desirable, such as child-resistant lids on medicine bottles, or guards on razor blades, but who's opinion is most relevant when it comes to where to draw the line? A real-world case might be Plex. How much responsiblity does Plex have to ensure that users aren't using it to self-host pirated material? or CSAM? With engineering effort they could pretty easily collect data on everything everybody is watching, including fingerprinting and stuff. Should they be expected or required to do that?
Frivolous9421 3y ago
And why is my computer not allowed to be racist if I instruct it to be racist?
- bigfudge 3y ago
  If you want to make it racist buy your own array of a100s and start training. Microsoft and others don’t want to facilitate that. I think it’s a reasonable concern. From a public policy perspective having millions of people who can instantly produce reams of racist abuse to swamp online fora is a problem, even if you believe in free speech. It potentially changes the power dynamic in favour of a racist minority to dominate public discourse. Social proof and social learning have powerful effects on behaviour. LLMs are great, but used at scale they will have downsides too.
  - AJ007 3y ago
    You don't need a bunch of a100s. The models you can download and run locally on a consumer GPU or Apple Silicon will say whatever you tell them to. You won't be getting GPT-4 level output (with some exceptions), but it's close.
    - nick__m 3y ago
      yeah, and while I have no experience with racist drivel, I am pretty sure that you don't need GPT4 to output text like : Fucking X they are comming to steal our jobs.
  - rapind 3y ago
    > having millions of people who can instantly produce reams of racist abuse to swamp online fora is a problem, even if you believe in free speech. It potentially changes the power dynamic in favour of a racist minority to dominate public discourse. I kinda think when (not if) this happens it's going to be quickly drowned in all sorts of other AI generated garbage. In fact, we will probably render internet news useless pretty sure without a proper trust / source identification system.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bradley13 3y ago
> When filters are removed, one of the first things people do to the bots is make them racists So what? Seriously, so what? Look, you can open Word on your system and type all sorts of racist stuff. Should Word auto-detect that (maybe with the help of AI) and refuse to accept your input? I don't think many people would find that to be a good idea. Another point: Individual users don't affect the knowledge base. LLMs are not like Tay, dynamically integrating user input. An LLM like ChatGPT may adapt within a particular conversation, but that affects literally no one but you.
- boredumb 3y ago
  > Should Word auto-detect that (maybe with the help of AI) and refuse to accept your input? You jest but please don't give any Microsoft employees gleaning this thread any great ideas to show off in their next product meeting.
- numinos1 3y ago
  We're already half way there. Google Docs now utilizes an "assistive writing" AI that displays warnings for words or phrases that are considered "non-inclusive".
  - bradley13 3y ago
    > Google Docs now utilizes an "assistive writing" AI that displays warnings for words or phrases that are considered "non-inclusive". I didn't want to know that. I did not want to know that.
boredumb 3y ago
So races with genetic predispositions to diseases should suffer because we trained it on socially kosher data to appease adults who are theoretically offended about being exposed to bad words on the internet? Victims should suffer because specifying a description of perpetrators are reported and identified partly based on race? Legal teams must act like youtube commentators and come up with filter escaping euphemisms when referencing their clients violent/sexual crimes deemed to evil for adults to be exposed to.

pdntspa 3y ago

Censorship is ALWAYS evil

_factor 3y ago
Maybe, but necessary in certain situations. Abusive or misleading content (definition up for debate) can be censored to prevent harm. If I have a blueprint for a homemade explosive that a 12 year old can make in a day, should that be easily accessible? Censorship only exists because people are more lazy than they are nefarious. The other aspect is protecting idiots from themselves. Whether that’s right or wrong, I’m not the judge.
- mordae 3y ago
  > Abusive or misleading content (definition up for debate) can be censored to prevent harm. Sure. > If I have a blueprint for a homemade explosive that a 12 year old can make in a day, should that be easily accessible? Yes.
- sirsinsalot 3y ago
  Yes let that 12 year old have the instructions. Maybe as a society we then will have to have the conversations about cause/effect and personal responsibility that prepare children for adulthood. When I was 9 my brother gave me a disc with all sorts of hacking and explosive making material. Jolly Rodger cookbook, handbooks on counterintel, hacking books about overflows. I had great fun making thermite and smoke bombs and it led me to my career in software. None of it was any more dangerous than climbing a tree because of good parenting.
  - _factor 3y ago
    In the majority of cases you maybe correct. But there are 12yr olds out there that don’t share your motives for building an explosive. Personal responsibility is great when it works with proper parenting. You’re going to have to deal with the real world when schools around America start blowing up to match the ideal.
- 3y ago

rurp 3y ago

I have a lot of concerns about how effective LLMs could be leveraged by powerful corporations to the detriment of society. But seeing the ham fisted approach most are taking to filtering/safety/etc has actually lowered my concern a fair amount. Even an AI that could be incredibly powerful will likely end up seriously hamstrung by these policies for the foreseeable future, greatly limiting how much damage it can do in practice.

ratg13 3y ago
Unless you are a government.
paul80808 3y ago
Maybe. But it seems unlikely - are you confident that the filtering were using on weak AI would also work on strong AI? I'm not...

burningChrome 3y ago

The interesting part is that as soon as ChatGPT came out and people realized it was filtering out or just refusing to answer questions, hackers got to work and got around the restrictions. Its not hard to find queries on how to dupe AI in order to give you nefarious responses like how to code up a ransomware script or how to code up a virus to create a DDoS bot army. I remember reading books about the history of computer hacking and they started with stories of the phreakers and people who believed that all information should be free regardless of what humanity did with it. They always had stories about how they would pick the locks on the doors the labs that held the earliest computers. When staff found out and changed the locks, they simply scoffed and learned how to pick those locks instead. It wasn't until the school threatened them with expulsion did they finally relent. In this day and age, as soon as you start putting up fencing around something, there's scores of people who just as anxious to find a way around it.