2 ms·

The one that jumped out at me was at the end when the article implies that an LLM is being racist by suggesting that black authors may be more likely to be conv

The one that jumped out at me was at the end when the article implies that an LLM is being racist by suggesting that black authors may be more likely to be convicted of a crime or sentenced to death. While I obviously can't find data specific to black authors, there is plenty of compelling data to show how biased our legal and prison system is [1]. Assuming that giving the LLM some kind of anti-racist training means they were reinforcing the idea that race specifically should be considered when interpreting trained model, it isn't surprising that it would then consider what patterns are found in data that are also broken down by race. [1] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/race/race-and-the-death-penalty-by-the-numbers https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/race/race-and-the...

cubefox 3y ago
This is again a case where statistical differences don't automatically imply bias or racism. The source doesn't make any indications about base rates. Maybe one group does indeed murder substantially more people of the other group, in which case the provided numbers don't show that the legal is biased. It also says that about half of the homicide victims are African American, but it doesn't say who the perpetrators are. If most perpetrators are African Americans themselves, this would be compatible with the legal system being unbiased here.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Oh for sure. I didn't mean to imply that data linked implies or proves racism - its just data. I just included it as an example of data that could reasonably lead an LLM to learning that fact. I don't know how they would do anti-racist training for an LLM, but presumably it would end IP reinforcing the idea that race is an important distinction to be aware of. Combined with the data it could similarly lead to responses like mentioned in the article without any actual racism at all (because its data + LLM and no malicious intent).

cubefox 3y ago

This is again a case where statistical differences don't automatically imply bias or racism. The source doesn't make any indications about base rates. Maybe one group does indeed murder substantially more people of the other group, in which case the provided numbers don't show that the legal is biased. It also says that about half of the homicide victims are African American, but it doesn't say who the perpetrators are. If most perpetrators are African Americans themselves, this would be compatible with the legal system being unbiased here.

_heimdall 3y ago
Oh for sure. I didn't mean to imply that data linked implies or proves racism - its just data. I just included it as an example of data that could reasonably lead an LLM to learning that fact. I don't know how they would do anti-racist training for an LLM, but presumably it would end IP reinforcing the idea that race is an important distinction to be aware of. Combined with the data it could similarly lead to responses like mentioned in the article without any actual racism at all (because its data + LLM and no malicious intent).