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> Your line of argument could be used to excuse almost anything that an AI does The difference between AI and LLMs are very important here. LLMs are ultimately
by _heimdall 3y ago
> Your line of argument could be used to excuse almost anything that an AI does
The difference between AI and LLMs are very important here. LLMs are ultimately just algorithms and party tricks, there's really nothing to excuse as they have no intent, no consciousness, no true intelligence at all.
Where LLMs can't be racist, for example, presumably an AI could. We will have plenty of questions to answer there like whether AI have rights, fall under the same laws as humans, can be convicted and punished, etc. The fact that people at scale aren't considering any of these questions is one of the main reasons I'm so opposes to AI research today. We need to know how we'll deal with an AI before we make it, and that includes all the legal and moral questions that will arise.
- foldr 3y agoOk, sure. I am talking about current technologies, not a hypothetical future AI.
- _heimdall 3y agoSure, I would excuse LLMs from being racist. I don't see how there could possibly be a compelling argument for them to be racist given how they actually work.
- foldr 3y agoAs I said, LLMs can be racist in the sense that their "statements reflect racist biases in society which have percolated into [their] training data". If your point is just that they can't be racist in the intentional way that, say, an individual human can be racist, then yeah, sure. They also can't be "woke" in the same way that an individual person can. The point is that we don't generally want general-purpose LLMs outputting offensive statements. I don't think anyone here is dumb enough to literally be offended at the inanimate LLM itself when this happens. But it's a failure of the product to perform as desired, and hence a target for improvement.
- _heimdall 3y agoI guess I'm not sure where the line here is. If I say something with absolutely no racist intentions behind it, but it just so happens to sound similar to something someone else said with racist intent, does that make me racist? The same goes for symbols, hand gestures, etc. There are symbols that are now often called dog whistles, meaning they are meant to be symbols that fly under the radar of most people. If I accidentally use the same symbol without even knowing its alternative meaning, that can't possibility make me racist as well. How is that different from the case of LLMs, and why can an LLM be racist?
- foldr 3y agoI already answered your last question. I don’t think you’re really engaging with my response. We agree that LLMs do not have intentions are are not literally fulminating with race hate. Nonetheless, an LLM is not performing as desired if racist biases in its training data cause it to make offensive statements about people of a given ethnicity.
- _heimdall 3y agoI'm not trying to ignore you're responses, I honestly just don't quite understand your view here. > Nonetheless, an LLM is not performing as desired if racist biases in its training data cause it to make offensive statements about people of a given ethnicity. This may clear it up actually. So in your view, is something racist if the person hearing/reading it is offended regardless of the intent or meaning the person saying it had in mind? I.e. a person would be deemed racist only by knowing how a third party received or interpreted the statement? That may be where we are missing each other here. In my view racism, sexism, etc has everything to do with the person saying it and nothing to do with the person who hears it.
- foldr 3y agoI do not have a grand unified theory of what is or isn't racist. Nor do I need one in order to understand the concept that racist biases implicit in an LLMs training data can be reflected in its output, in a way that makes that output offensive to large numbers of people and unsuitable for general purpose use. Fussing over the semantics of whether or not the LLM itself is 'racist' is a complete red herring. The article merely says that the LLM may 'use racist stereotypes' or 'offer racist replies'. It's perfectly clear what is meant by this, even if you disagree with some specific examples.