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To me this looks like so much bad idea. From my reading of the post cloudflare is diving headfirst into moderation and culture wars. The paying users of CF wil

To me this looks like so much bad idea. From my reading of the post cloudflare is diving headfirst into moderation and culture wars. The paying users of CF will pay CF to enforce their political biases, and then the users of the AIs will accuse CF of being being complicit in censoring things and whatnot, and CF will find themselves in the middle of political battles they didn't need to jump into.

ipython 3y ago
Wow. So companies can’t control their own image now? They’re forced to let you trick some llm they host to spew out garbage? Such a weird take.
- speeder 3y ago
  They are absolutely allowed to do that. And PR firms, fact checking firms, etc... exist to help with that kind of thing. I am not saying a product like this shouldn't exist, I am just saying that CF making this offering is bad idea to CF, they are infrastructure company that now decided to participate in culture wars as if it was a PR company...
  - ipython 3y ago
    You've once again repeated the same line about "culture wars". How exactly is this different from any other tool? Should VS Code hit up an error if you write code to check in a regex for /liberal tears/? How about s/hitler//g? As far as I can see in the announcement, the tool itself does not present any particular viewpoint. Is filtering out PII data now all of a sudden part of some sort of culture war? Given the wide availability of "open source" models (in quotes because, while they're freely available, I don't believe they follow in the same spirit of true open source, with reproducible builds, etc), you can build an AI/LLM to do whatever you like, whether it's illegal in your locality or not. CloudFlare's customers want some sort of functionality to put guardrails around their LLM deployments, and they are offering it. As you say, companies that contract with CF are "allowed" to use this tool; CloudFlare is not mandating the use of the tool. Is infrastructure truly neutral? If so, you should read about how the Taliban (owner of the .af TLD) unilaterally deregistered the domain name `queer.af`. CloudFlare has famously deplatformed the Daily Stormer.
OJFord 3y ago
Cloudflare already sits in front of all kinds of content, and iirc aggressively anything goes your content your problem, but happy to serve it/proxy DNS/etc. It was sued and found not liable for breach of copyright on users' sites for example.
- diarrhea 3y ago
  Right. Last I checked they fronted 4chan, but did kick 8chan off their services on moral grounds.
ranyume 3y ago
I think this is good for everyone. If CF's firewall or similar initiatives take the spot/burden of "securing AI models" (against the user), then developers can focus on the eficiency of the model and disregard protections for toxic responses. If things advance in this path, releasing uncensored models might become the norm.
skywhopper 3y ago
I don't think this has anything to do with censoring models. This is an actual security mechanism for apps that rely on chatbots to generate real-world action, ie anything to do with real money or actual people, not just generated text.
criddell 3y ago
Like the Rush song says, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Cloudflare deciding to do nothing may make them complicit in a different way.
- Zuiii 3y ago
  Perhaps but staying neutral is still very much a valid way of staying out of things as much as possible. As a commercial enterprise, I would be happy to alienate a small subset of my customers on both sides if it means I don't alienate all customers on one side. That said, being a MITM is the entire point of cloudflare so I don't see this as an issue for them. The other side can also use this service to protect their own models when they eventually start popping up.

ipython 3y ago

Wow. So companies can’t control their own image now? They’re forced to let you trick some llm they host to spew out garbage? Such a weird take.

speeder 3y ago
They are absolutely allowed to do that. And PR firms, fact checking firms, etc... exist to help with that kind of thing. I am not saying a product like this shouldn't exist, I am just saying that CF making this offering is bad idea to CF, they are infrastructure company that now decided to participate in culture wars as if it was a PR company...
- ipython 3y ago
  You've once again repeated the same line about "culture wars". How exactly is this different from any other tool? Should VS Code hit up an error if you write code to check in a regex for /liberal tears/? How about s/hitler//g? As far as I can see in the announcement, the tool itself does not present any particular viewpoint. Is filtering out PII data now all of a sudden part of some sort of culture war? Given the wide availability of "open source" models (in quotes because, while they're freely available, I don't believe they follow in the same spirit of true open source, with reproducible builds, etc), you can build an AI/LLM to do whatever you like, whether it's illegal in your locality or not. CloudFlare's customers want some sort of functionality to put guardrails around their LLM deployments, and they are offering it. As you say, companies that contract with CF are "allowed" to use this tool; CloudFlare is not mandating the use of the tool. Is infrastructure truly neutral? If so, you should read about how the Taliban (owner of the .af TLD) unilaterally deregistered the domain name `queer.af`. CloudFlare has famously deplatformed the Daily Stormer.

OJFord 3y ago

Cloudflare already sits in front of all kinds of content, and iirc aggressively anything goes your content your problem, but happy to serve it/proxy DNS/etc. It was sued and found not liable for breach of copyright on users' sites for example.

diarrhea 3y ago
Right. Last I checked they fronted 4chan, but did kick 8chan off their services on moral grounds.

ranyume 3y ago

I think this is good for everyone. If CF's firewall or similar initiatives take the spot/burden of "securing AI models" (against the user), then developers can focus on the eficiency of the model and disregard protections for toxic responses. If things advance in this path, releasing uncensored models might become the norm.

skywhopper 3y ago

I don't think this has anything to do with censoring models. This is an actual security mechanism for apps that rely on chatbots to generate real-world action, ie anything to do with real money or actual people, not just generated text.

criddell 3y ago

Like the Rush song says, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Cloudflare deciding to do nothing may make them complicit in a different way.

Zuiii 3y ago
Perhaps but staying neutral is still very much a valid way of staying out of things as much as possible. As a commercial enterprise, I would be happy to alienate a small subset of my customers on both sides if it means I don't alienate all customers on one side. That said, being a MITM is the entire point of cloudflare so I don't see this as an issue for them. The other side can also use this service to protect their own models when they eventually start popping up.