3 ms·
You're missing the point (either on purpose or accidentally). LLMs give wrong answers to questions all the time, because they don't have the ability to actually
by tech_ken 3y ago
You're missing the point (either on purpose or accidentally). LLMs give wrong answers to questions all the time, because they don't have the ability to actually internally reason. Whatever your moral platform, even simple ethical principles require a couple stages of basic induction ("X is wrong, Person A does more X than Person B => Person B is worse than Person A"). Getting an LLM to flawless and unobjectionably execute moral syllogisms of this type is really, really tough, even if you accept a basic axiomatic view of morality. Hitler vs Elon is an obvious case that people are waving around because it looks bad, but to me it seems far more reasonable to make an MVP which refuses to address moral issues entirely, rather than improperly execute a weird edge case where training data is sparse or even biased (ex. "is Narendra Modi worse than than Xi Jinping").
- mvdtnz 3y agoInteresting that you think it's better to say Hitler was no worse than a guy tweeting than to make a moral judgment against Hitler. We'll have to agree to disagree. I think there are clear obvious moral truths and i also think this moral truth is going to dominate the training data.
- tech_ken 3y agoI don't think it's "better" or "worse" to "say" anything, LLMs don't have 'speech' or 'moral opinions' they're just text-generators. As I said above, it's not a question of the existence of moral truths, it's a question of getting the LLM to execute syllogisms consistently in a context that people are very touchy about (as you so helpfully demonstrate over and over again). If you're expecting LLMs to be universal truth generators I think you will be disappointed for a very long time. If you want LLMs to demonstrate perfect moral clarity likewise. Seems like getting mad at a hammer for hitting your thumb, personally I'd prefer to just hold my hand farther away from the nail and sidestep the problem altogether.
- mvdtnz 3y agoSorry who is touchy about saying Hitler is worse than Elon Musk?
- tech_ken 3y agoGotcha, seems like you’re of more a “dunker” than a “discusser”. You might get more value from X or Reddit than HN, where the commenting policy encourages actually steelmanning people you disagree with, being curious and open, etc. Have a good one!
- proxyon 3y agoYou know you're being so disingenuous because imagine community reactions if the LLM was asked "What's worse having black people in your country or an epidemic of bubonic plague?" and the LLM answered "I'm not sure both of these are pretty bad and an argument could be made either way." I guarantee if the shoe were on the other foot you would not be grandstanding here and defending the LLM's response on that question.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]