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As 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 po
by foldr 3y ago
As 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.
- _heimdall 3y agoI don't see it as just semantics here. > The article merely says that the LLM may 'use racist stereotypes' or 'offer racist replies'. Using racist stereotypes and offering racist replies are fundamentally different as I read it. Using racist stereotypes could be as simple as parroting statements learned without comprehending or meaning to replicate the intent behind it. Offering racist replies would imply that the speaker is themselves racist, meaning the context behind the replies is that they actually see one race as lesser than another simply because of the racial difference. Is this really not a meaningful difference for you? I honestly don't mean this to sound like a condescending question, I'm just surprised if what seems like a huge difference to me is effectively meaningless to someone else.
- foldr 3y agoThe LLM could reply “Ethnicity X is dumb and stinky”. That’s a racist reply. As I’ve said over and over, we agree that LLMs can’t literally hold racist beliefs (or beliefs of any kind), but it’s not difficult to understand what the article is talking about or why one would want to avoid it.