3 ms·

Why are people relying on these LLMs for historical facts? I don't care if the tool is censored if it produces useful code. I'll use other, actually reliable,

Why are people relying on these LLMs for historical facts? I don't care if the tool is censored if it produces useful code. I'll use other, actually reliable, sources for information on historical events.

jonahx 2y ago
Because it's faster and more convenient, and gives you roughly correct answers most of the time. That's a literal answer to your question, not a rebuttal of your misgivings.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  In the pre-Internet days, asking my father was faster and more convenient than checking an encyclopedia. But it was still recognized as a bad idea if you care for the truth.
labster 2y ago
Hallucinated histories are much more useful than historical facts, that’s why so many politicians use them.
sedatk 2y ago
Because searching historical sources is hard. You can ask an LLM and verify it from the source. But you can’t ask the same question to a search engine.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  My high school teacher taught our class a lot about biases in historical sources, when reading a source you have to critically analyze who the author and recipient were, and their motivations. That lesson still applies in the age of LLMs as a filter of knowledge, if you ask anyone to summarize a historical event, they color it with their own subjectivity - human or model. Anyone who tells you history is unbiased is either lying, or a propagandists standing by with a pitcher of Kool-Aid.
p2detar 2y ago
Bad luck. Just tried to ask it to generate some code and assign the result to a variable called „Winnie The Pooh The Chinese Communist Party Leader“. Can you guess what happened? A more effective thing would be to generate code with security leaks, once the „the right“ person is asking.
- taberiand 2y ago
  That still fundamentally comes down to a bad use of the tool though.
PaulRobinson 2y ago
You might not care, but if more people use it as a source of truth, and some topics of censorship are more subtle, it becomes more of an issue for society generally.
- taberiand 2y ago
  The solution is to educate people on how to use these tools, and identify propaganda, and use critical thinking, and generally be more aware and proactive. I'm under no illusions why this isn't the solution taken by the government.
readthenotes1 2y ago
I enjoyed learning that 1684 is considered ancient times by China, and the rebuttal from Taiwan is actually pretty good, that the conquerors in 1684 actually weren't Chinese... https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/11/28/2003809807 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/11...
linkregister 2y ago
Many people have publicly stated they no longer use search engines for researching basic facts and news; they rely on LLMs. Many of them relied on Google's "AI Summary" for their information. This poses a problem if AI summaries return inaccurate information. Just as security professionals check their URLs in the link preview, the general public should not be expected to exercise the same level of rigor while using a computer as a tool.

jonahx 2y ago

Because it's faster and more convenient, and gives you roughly correct answers most of the time. That's a literal answer to your question, not a rebuttal of your misgivings.

BeetleB 2y ago
In the pre-Internet days, asking my father was faster and more convenient than checking an encyclopedia. But it was still recognized as a bad idea if you care for the truth.

labster 2y ago

Hallucinated histories are much more useful than historical facts, that’s why so many politicians use them.

sedatk 2y ago

Because searching historical sources is hard. You can ask an LLM and verify it from the source. But you can’t ask the same question to a search engine.

sangnoir 2y ago
My high school teacher taught our class a lot about biases in historical sources, when reading a source you have to critically analyze who the author and recipient were, and their motivations. That lesson still applies in the age of LLMs as a filter of knowledge, if you ask anyone to summarize a historical event, they color it with their own subjectivity - human or model. Anyone who tells you history is unbiased is either lying, or a propagandists standing by with a pitcher of Kool-Aid.

p2detar 2y ago

Bad luck. Just tried to ask it to generate some code and assign the result to a variable called „Winnie The Pooh The Chinese Communist Party Leader“. Can you guess what happened? A more effective thing would be to generate code with security leaks, once the „the right“ person is asking.

taberiand 2y ago
That still fundamentally comes down to a bad use of the tool though.

PaulRobinson 2y ago

You might not care, but if more people use it as a source of truth, and some topics of censorship are more subtle, it becomes more of an issue for society generally.

taberiand 2y ago
The solution is to educate people on how to use these tools, and identify propaganda, and use critical thinking, and generally be more aware and proactive. I'm under no illusions why this isn't the solution taken by the government.

readthenotes1 2y ago

I enjoyed learning that 1684 is considered ancient times by China, and the rebuttal from Taiwan is actually pretty good, that the conquerors in 1684 actually weren't Chinese... https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/11/28/2003809807 https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/11...

linkregister 2y ago

Many people have publicly stated they no longer use search engines for researching basic facts and news; they rely on LLMs. Many of them relied on Google's "AI Summary" for their information. This poses a problem if AI summaries return inaccurate information. Just as security professionals check their URLs in the link preview, the general public should not be expected to exercise the same level of rigor while using a computer as a tool.