4 ms·

IMO one of the main things ChatGPT offers is the ability to interact with the knowledge of the internet without wading through ads and SEO spam.

pfd1986 3y ago
Agreed. I think this is a good argument towards development of open LLMs. If you're old enough, similar arguments existed about "open / free internet" and we're seeing some of the consequences of having it be controlled by mega corps.
- janoc 3y ago
  That's naive. There are open LLMs already. The problem is not the LLMs but that data they are being trained on is going to be increasingly spammy, scammy garbage. The LLMs don't have any sort of magical way of filtering that out. So if you train an LLM on spam, hoaxes and similar garbage you will get recommendations to drink bleach as a cure for covid. And that applies regardless of whether the bot is trained by a megacorp or someone in their garage using open source network and tools.
janoc 3y ago
The problem is that you are outsourcing that information curation to a bot that is 100% happy to feed you bullshit - and you have no recourse and no way to check because it doesn't tell you how did it arrive at the information it is feeding you. Also that information is by definition old. For something it doesn't matter, for many other things, like current news, it very much does. So while the attraction of having a personal "butler" doing the hard work for you is great, no doubt, it is ultimately no better than getting one's information from Facebook - you have ceded control and get whatever the creators of the system deem you worthy of having. Including political and other agendas. Just look at the censorship the Baidu bot is applying and the entire "jailbreaking" industry around escaping the artificially imposed boundaries on these bots, for good or bad reasons. And ultimately even ChatGPT and its ilk won't help us any when the web they scrape will be filled with machine-generated spam and crap drowning out all the useful information. Garbage in, garbage out applies even to these robots. They aren't magic.
Syonyk 3y ago
It certainly sounds like it's doing that. Though if you're an expert in a subject you ask it about, you can see when it transitions from "knowledge of the subject" to "Your uncle who made a living hustling pool and can tell a story made of nothing but whoppers of lies, sounding like the most honest person you've ever met." It's reasonable to assume it does the same thing over subjects you know less about.
- darkerside 3y ago
  Which also happens with tons of user generated content on the Internet, case in point, this thread
  - arp242 3y ago
    But with user generated content like this thread other people can criticize each other and discuss things. If someone is spectacularly wrong then chances are that will be pointed out. ChatGPT is essentially an echo chamber between you and ChatGPT.
    - darkerside 3y ago
      That's a personal problem, not a technology problem. If you let yourself be brainwashed by your weird uncle, alt news, or ChatGPT, that's gotta be on you.
      - arp242 3y ago
        "Brainwashed" is a hugely extremist scenario. The point is that if I ask about topics I don't know about, then by definition I can't judge what is or isn't true. That is also the case on HN where I'm reading a discussion about a topic I don't know about, but that on HN there are some signals such as votes and replies to comments, whereas on ChatGPT there are no external signals. Is this perfect? Of course not. Does it usually work kind of okay? I'd say it does. For books or sites or most things these signals exist too; I can look up what others have said about it. Even your uncle at a birthday party has some controls because other family members can call him out on hos bullshit, or they can later tell "psst, what Jack told you is a load of rubbish", or whatever. There is no "generic review" of ChatGPT because it tells every single person someone else. There is no shared content we're both looking at. ChatGPT very much works in a substantially different way than most other public sources of information.
notabee 3y ago
For now. How long do you think it'll really take before it's also pitching you products? We might have a golden period, kind of like when streaming and Netflix first arrived, but that will surely give way to enshittification and ads.
sensanaty 3y ago
Lol ChatGPT is the biggest boost for scammers out there, and what's gonna happen in the future when the only thing these LLMs train on is other AI-spewed crap?

pfd1986 3y ago

Agreed. I think this is a good argument towards development of open LLMs. If you're old enough, similar arguments existed about "open / free internet" and we're seeing some of the consequences of having it be controlled by mega corps.

janoc 3y ago
That's naive. There are open LLMs already. The problem is not the LLMs but that data they are being trained on is going to be increasingly spammy, scammy garbage. The LLMs don't have any sort of magical way of filtering that out. So if you train an LLM on spam, hoaxes and similar garbage you will get recommendations to drink bleach as a cure for covid. And that applies regardless of whether the bot is trained by a megacorp or someone in their garage using open source network and tools.

janoc 3y ago

The problem is that you are outsourcing that information curation to a bot that is 100% happy to feed you bullshit - and you have no recourse and no way to check because it doesn't tell you how did it arrive at the information it is feeding you. Also that information is by definition old. For something it doesn't matter, for many other things, like current news, it very much does. So while the attraction of having a personal "butler" doing the hard work for you is great, no doubt, it is ultimately no better than getting one's information from Facebook - you have ceded control and get whatever the creators of the system deem you worthy of having. Including political and other agendas. Just look at the censorship the Baidu bot is applying and the entire "jailbreaking" industry around escaping the artificially imposed boundaries on these bots, for good or bad reasons. And ultimately even ChatGPT and its ilk won't help us any when the web they scrape will be filled with machine-generated spam and crap drowning out all the useful information. Garbage in, garbage out applies even to these robots. They aren't magic.

Syonyk 3y ago

It certainly sounds like it's doing that. Though if you're an expert in a subject you ask it about, you can see when it transitions from "knowledge of the subject" to "Your uncle who made a living hustling pool and can tell a story made of nothing but whoppers of lies, sounding like the most honest person you've ever met." It's reasonable to assume it does the same thing over subjects you know less about.

darkerside 3y ago
Which also happens with tons of user generated content on the Internet, case in point, this thread
- arp242 3y ago
  But with user generated content like this thread other people can criticize each other and discuss things. If someone is spectacularly wrong then chances are that will be pointed out. ChatGPT is essentially an echo chamber between you and ChatGPT.
  - darkerside 3y ago
    That's a personal problem, not a technology problem. If you let yourself be brainwashed by your weird uncle, alt news, or ChatGPT, that's gotta be on you.
    - arp242 3y ago
      "Brainwashed" is a hugely extremist scenario. The point is that if I ask about topics I don't know about, then by definition I can't judge what is or isn't true. That is also the case on HN where I'm reading a discussion about a topic I don't know about, but that on HN there are some signals such as votes and replies to comments, whereas on ChatGPT there are no external signals. Is this perfect? Of course not. Does it usually work kind of okay? I'd say it does. For books or sites or most things these signals exist too; I can look up what others have said about it. Even your uncle at a birthday party has some controls because other family members can call him out on hos bullshit, or they can later tell "psst, what Jack told you is a load of rubbish", or whatever. There is no "generic review" of ChatGPT because it tells every single person someone else. There is no shared content we're both looking at. ChatGPT very much works in a substantially different way than most other public sources of information.

notabee 3y ago

For now. How long do you think it'll really take before it's also pitching you products? We might have a golden period, kind of like when streaming and Netflix first arrived, but that will surely give way to enshittification and ads.

sensanaty 3y ago

Lol ChatGPT is the biggest boost for scammers out there, and what's gonna happen in the future when the only thing these LLMs train on is other AI-spewed crap?