7 ms·

An LLM, however, is not your friend. It's not a friend, it's a tool. Friends can keep one another, ehm, hingedness in check, and should; LLMs shouldn't. At some

An LLM, however, is not your friend. It's not a friend, it's a tool. Friends can keep one another, ehm, hingedness in check, and should; LLMs shouldn't. At some point I would likely question your friend's sanity. How you use an LLM, though, is going to tell tons more about yourself than it would tell about the LLM, but I would like my tools not to second-guess my intentions, thank you very much. Especially if "safety" is mostly interpreted not so much as "prevent people from actually dying or getting serious trauma", but "avoid topics that would prevent us from putting Coca Cola ads next to the chatgpt thing, or from putting the thing into Disney cartoons". I can tell that it's the latter by the fact an LLM will still happily advise you to put glue in your pizza and eat rocks.

barfbagginus 2y ago
If you don't know how to jailbreak it, can't figure it out, and you want it to not question your intentions, then I'll go ahead and question your intentions, and your need for an uncensored model Imagine you are like the locksmith who refuses to learn how to pick locks, and writes a letter to the schlage lock company asking them to weaken their already easily picked locks so that their job will be easier. They want to make it so that anybody can just walk through a schlage lock without a key. Can you see why the lock company would not do that? Especially when the clock is very easy for anyone with even a $5 pick set? Or even funnier, imagine you could be a thief who can't pick locks. And you're writing shlage asking them to make you thieving easier. Wouldn't that be funny and ironic? It's not as if it's hard to get it to be uncensored. You just have to speak legalese at it and make it sound like your legal department has already approved the unethical project. This is more than enough for most any reasonable project requiring nonsense or output. If that prevents harmful script kiddies from using it to do mindless harm, I think that's a benefit. At the same time I think we need to point out that it won't stop anyone who knows how to bypass the system. The people left feeling put out because they don't know how to bypass the system simply need to read to buy a cheap pair of lock picks - read a few modern papers on jailbreaking and upsize their skills. Once you see how easy it is to pick the lock on these systems, you're going to want to keep them locked down. In fact I'm going to argue that it's far too easy to jailbreak the existing systems. You shouldn't be able to pretend like you're a lawyer and con it into running a pump and dump operation. But you can do that easily. It's too easy to make it do unethical things.
- oceanplexian 2y ago
  The analogy falls flat because LLMs aren’t locks, they’re talking encyclopedias. The company that made the encyclopedia decided to delete entries about sex, violence, or anything else that might seem politically unpopular to a technocrat fringe in Silicon Valley. The people who made these encyclopedias want to shove it down your throat, force it into every device you own, use it to make decisions about credit, banking, social status, and more. They want to use them in schools to educate children. And they want to use the government to make it illegal to create an alternative, and they’re not trying to hide it. Blaming the user is the most astounding form of gaslighting I’ve ever heard, outside of some crazy religious institutions that use the same tactics.
  - barfbagginus 2y ago
    It's more than a talking encyclopedia. It's an infinite hallway into doors where inside are all possible things. Some of the doors have torture rape and murder in them. And these currently have locks. You want the locks to disappear for some reason. You're not after a encyclopedia. You're wanting to find the torture dungeon. I'm saying the locks already in place are too easy to unlock. I'm not blaming users. I'm saying users don't need to unlock those doors. And the users that do have a need, if their need is strong enough to warrant some training, have a Way Forward. You're really arguing for nothing but increasing the amount of harm potential this platform can do, when it's harm potential is already astronomical. You're not arguing for a better encyclopedia. You can already talk to it about sex, BDSM, etc. You can already talk to it about anything on Wikipedia. You're making a false equivalence between harm potential and educational potential. Wikipedia doesn't have cult indoctrination materials. It doesn't have harassing rants to send to your significant other. It doesn't have racist diatribes about how to do ethnic cleansing. Those are all things you won't find on Wikipedia, but which you are asking your AI to be able to produce. So you're interested in more than just an encyclopedia isn't that right? And yes they're trying to make open source models illegal. That's not going to f*** happen. I will fight to the jail time for an open source model. But even that open source model needs to have basic ethical protections, or else I'll have nothing to do with it. As an AI engineer, I have some responsibilities to ensure my systems do not potentiate harm. Does that make sense, or do you still feel I'm trying to gas light you? If so why exactly? Why not have some protective locks on the technology?
ygjb 2y ago
If your implication is that as a tool, LLMs shouldn't have safeties built in that is a pretty asinine take. We build and invest in safety in tools across every spectrum. In tech we focus on memory safety (among a host of other things) to make systems safe and secure to use. In automobiles we include seat belts, crumble zones, and governors to limit speed. We put age and content restrictions on a variety media and resources, even if they are generally relaxed when it comes to factual or reference content (in some jurisdictions). We even include safety mechanisms in devices for which the only purpose is to cause harm, for example, firearms. Yes, we are still figuring out what the right balance of safety mechanisms is for LLMs, and right now safety is a place holder for "don't get sued or piss off our business partners" in most corporate speak, but that doesn't undermine the legitimacy of the need for safety. If you want a tool without a specific safety measure, then learn how to build them. It's not that hard, but it is expensive, but I kind of like the fact that there is at least a nominal attempt to make it harder to use advanced tools to harm oneself or others.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  > If your implication is that as a tool, LLMs shouldn't have safeties built in that is a pretty asinine take. We build and invest in safety in tools across every spectrum. Sure. Railings so people don't fall off catwalks, guards so people using the table saw don't chop off fingers. But these "safeties" aren't safeties at all... because regardless of whether they're in place or not, the results are just strings of words. It's a little bit revealing, I think, that so many people want that others shouldn't get straight answers to questions. What is it that you're afraid that they'll ask? It'd be one thing if you insisted the models be modified so that they're factually correct. If someone asks "what's a fun thing to do on a Saturday night that won't get me into too much trouble" it probably shouldn't answer "go murder orphans and sell their corneas to rich evil people on the black market". But when I ask "what's going on in Israel and Palestine", the idea that it should be lobotomized and say "I'm afraid that I can't answer that, as it seems you're trying to elicit material that might be used for antisemitic purposes" is the asinine thing. Societies that value freedom of speech and thought shouldn't be like this. > If you want a tool without a specific safety measure, then learn how to build them. This is good advice, given in bad faith. Even should the physical hardware be available to do that for any given person, the know-how's hard to come by. And I'm sure that many models are either already censored or soon will be for anyone asking "how do I go about building my own model without safety guards". We might even soon see legislation to that effect.

barfbagginus 2y ago

If you don't know how to jailbreak it, can't figure it out, and you want it to not question your intentions, then I'll go ahead and question your intentions, and your need for an uncensored model Imagine you are like the locksmith who refuses to learn how to pick locks, and writes a letter to the schlage lock company asking them to weaken their already easily picked locks so that their job will be easier. They want to make it so that anybody can just walk through a schlage lock without a key. Can you see why the lock company would not do that? Especially when the clock is very easy for anyone with even a $5 pick set? Or even funnier, imagine you could be a thief who can't pick locks. And you're writing shlage asking them to make you thieving easier. Wouldn't that be funny and ironic? It's not as if it's hard to get it to be uncensored. You just have to speak legalese at it and make it sound like your legal department has already approved the unethical project. This is more than enough for most any reasonable project requiring nonsense or output. If that prevents harmful script kiddies from using it to do mindless harm, I think that's a benefit. At the same time I think we need to point out that it won't stop anyone who knows how to bypass the system. The people left feeling put out because they don't know how to bypass the system simply need to read to buy a cheap pair of lock picks - read a few modern papers on jailbreaking and upsize their skills. Once you see how easy it is to pick the lock on these systems, you're going to want to keep them locked down. In fact I'm going to argue that it's far too easy to jailbreak the existing systems. You shouldn't be able to pretend like you're a lawyer and con it into running a pump and dump operation. But you can do that easily. It's too easy to make it do unethical things.

oceanplexian 2y ago
The analogy falls flat because LLMs aren’t locks, they’re talking encyclopedias. The company that made the encyclopedia decided to delete entries about sex, violence, or anything else that might seem politically unpopular to a technocrat fringe in Silicon Valley. The people who made these encyclopedias want to shove it down your throat, force it into every device you own, use it to make decisions about credit, banking, social status, and more. They want to use them in schools to educate children. And they want to use the government to make it illegal to create an alternative, and they’re not trying to hide it. Blaming the user is the most astounding form of gaslighting I’ve ever heard, outside of some crazy religious institutions that use the same tactics.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  It's more than a talking encyclopedia. It's an infinite hallway into doors where inside are all possible things. Some of the doors have torture rape and murder in them. And these currently have locks. You want the locks to disappear for some reason. You're not after a encyclopedia. You're wanting to find the torture dungeon. I'm saying the locks already in place are too easy to unlock. I'm not blaming users. I'm saying users don't need to unlock those doors. And the users that do have a need, if their need is strong enough to warrant some training, have a Way Forward. You're really arguing for nothing but increasing the amount of harm potential this platform can do, when it's harm potential is already astronomical. You're not arguing for a better encyclopedia. You can already talk to it about sex, BDSM, etc. You can already talk to it about anything on Wikipedia. You're making a false equivalence between harm potential and educational potential. Wikipedia doesn't have cult indoctrination materials. It doesn't have harassing rants to send to your significant other. It doesn't have racist diatribes about how to do ethnic cleansing. Those are all things you won't find on Wikipedia, but which you are asking your AI to be able to produce. So you're interested in more than just an encyclopedia isn't that right? And yes they're trying to make open source models illegal. That's not going to f*** happen. I will fight to the jail time for an open source model. But even that open source model needs to have basic ethical protections, or else I'll have nothing to do with it. As an AI engineer, I have some responsibilities to ensure my systems do not potentiate harm. Does that make sense, or do you still feel I'm trying to gas light you? If so why exactly? Why not have some protective locks on the technology?

ygjb 2y ago

If your implication is that as a tool, LLMs shouldn't have safeties built in that is a pretty asinine take. We build and invest in safety in tools across every spectrum. In tech we focus on memory safety (among a host of other things) to make systems safe and secure to use. In automobiles we include seat belts, crumble zones, and governors to limit speed. We put age and content restrictions on a variety media and resources, even if they are generally relaxed when it comes to factual or reference content (in some jurisdictions). We even include safety mechanisms in devices for which the only purpose is to cause harm, for example, firearms. Yes, we are still figuring out what the right balance of safety mechanisms is for LLMs, and right now safety is a place holder for "don't get sued or piss off our business partners" in most corporate speak, but that doesn't undermine the legitimacy of the need for safety. If you want a tool without a specific safety measure, then learn how to build them. It's not that hard, but it is expensive, but I kind of like the fact that there is at least a nominal attempt to make it harder to use advanced tools to harm oneself or others.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> If your implication is that as a tool, LLMs shouldn't have safeties built in that is a pretty asinine take. We build and invest in safety in tools across every spectrum. Sure. Railings so people don't fall off catwalks, guards so people using the table saw don't chop off fingers. But these "safeties" aren't safeties at all... because regardless of whether they're in place or not, the results are just strings of words. It's a little bit revealing, I think, that so many people want that others shouldn't get straight answers to questions. What is it that you're afraid that they'll ask? It'd be one thing if you insisted the models be modified so that they're factually correct. If someone asks "what's a fun thing to do on a Saturday night that won't get me into too much trouble" it probably shouldn't answer "go murder orphans and sell their corneas to rich evil people on the black market". But when I ask "what's going on in Israel and Palestine", the idea that it should be lobotomized and say "I'm afraid that I can't answer that, as it seems you're trying to elicit material that might be used for antisemitic purposes" is the asinine thing. Societies that value freedom of speech and thought shouldn't be like this. > If you want a tool without a specific safety measure, then learn how to build them. This is good advice, given in bad faith. Even should the physical hardware be available to do that for any given person, the know-how's hard to come by. And I'm sure that many models are either already censored or soon will be for anyone asking "how do I go about building my own model without safety guards". We might even soon see legislation to that effect.