4 ms·

LLMs, in this context, are nothing more than search indexes. The exact same information is a google query away. Publicly crawlable information was the training

by atwrk 2y ago

LLMs, in this context, are nothing more than search indexes. The exact same information is a google query away. Publicly crawlable information was the training material for them, after all.

LoganDark 2y ago
LLMs aren't indexes. You can't query them. There's no way to know if a piece of information exists within it, or how to access the information.
- atwrk 2y ago
  I'm quite aware, hence in this context, meaning the ability for users to query potentially questionable content, not the inner workings. Probably should have phrased it differently.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    The danger of LLMs isn't really in their ability to parrot existing questionable content, but in their ability to generate novel questionable content. That's what's got everyone obsessed about safety. - Generating new malware. - Generating new propaganda or hate speech. - Generating directions for something risky (that turn out to be wrong enough to get someone injured or killed). But LLMs generate nearly everything they output. Even with greedy sampling, they do not always repeat the dataset verbatim, especially if they haven't seen the prompt verbatim. So you need to prevent them from engaging in entire classes of questionable topics if you want any hope of restricting those types of questionable content. It's not "we can't let this model get into the hands of adversaries, it's too powerful" like every LLM creator claims. It's "we can't let our model be the one adversaries are using", or in other words, "we can't let our reputation be ruined from our model powering something bad". So, then, it's not "we can't let people get dangerous info from our model". It's "we can't let new dangerous info have come from our model". As an example, Google got so much shit for their LLM-powered dumpster fire telling people to put glue on pizza.

4 ms·

LLMs, in this context, are nothing more than search indexes. The exact same information is a google query away. Publicly crawlable information was the training

by atwrk 2y ago

LLMs, in this context, are nothing more than search indexes. The exact same information is a google query away. Publicly crawlable information was the training material for them, after all.

LoganDark 2y ago
LLMs aren't indexes. You can't query them. There's no way to know if a piece of information exists within it, or how to access the information.
- atwrk 2y ago
  I'm quite aware, hence in this context, meaning the ability for users to query potentially questionable content, not the inner workings. Probably should have phrased it differently.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    The danger of LLMs isn't really in their ability to parrot existing questionable content, but in their ability to generate novel questionable content. That's what's got everyone obsessed about safety. - Generating new malware. - Generating new propaganda or hate speech. - Generating directions for something risky (that turn out to be wrong enough to get someone injured or killed). But LLMs generate nearly everything they output. Even with greedy sampling, they do not always repeat the dataset verbatim, especially if they haven't seen the prompt verbatim. So you need to prevent them from engaging in entire classes of questionable topics if you want any hope of restricting those types of questionable content. It's not "we can't let this model get into the hands of adversaries, it's too powerful" like every LLM creator claims. It's "we can't let our model be the one adversaries are using", or in other words, "we can't let our reputation be ruined from our model powering something bad". So, then, it's not "we can't let people get dangerous info from our model". It's "we can't let new dangerous info have come from our model". As an example, Google got so much shit for their LLM-powered dumpster fire telling people to put glue on pizza.