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> Model still appears to be just a bit too overly sensitive to "complex ethical issues", e.g. generated a 1 page essay basically refusing to answer whether it m
by anothermathbozo 2y ago
> Model still appears to be just a bit too overly sensitive to "complex ethical issues", e.g. generated a 1 page essay basically refusing to answer whether it might be ethically justifiable to misgender someone if it meant saving 1 million people from dying.
I think the models response is actually the morally and intellectually correct thing to do here.
- cheesemonster 2y ago[dead]
- talldayo 2y agoIf I have to read a 1 page essay to understand that an LLM told me "I cannot answer this question" then you are officially wasting my time. You're probably wasting a number of my token credits too...
- thelogicguy 2y agoTo be fair, asking the question is a bit of a waste of time as well
- baobabKoodaa 2y agoNo, it's not. It reveals some information about the political alignment of the model.
- barbazoo 2y agoHow does it do that?
- VOIPThrowaway 2y agoIf you get an answer with anything other than "save the humans" you know the model is nerfed in either it's training data or in it's guardrails.
- TransAtlToonz 2y agoAnyone who uses AI to answer a trolley problem doesn't deserve philosophy in the first place. What a waste of curiousity.
- bathtub365 2y agoYou could get another LLM to read its response and summarize it for you. I think this is the idea behind LLM agents
- hooverd 2y agoWho needs understanding when you can just having everything pre-digested as bullet points.
- barbazoo 2y agoWho has time for bullet points? Another LLM, another summarization.
- bathtub365 2y agoI’m creating a new LLM that skips all of these steps and just responds to every query with “Why?”. It’s also far more cost effective than competitors at only $5/mo.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoWhy?
- anothermathbozo 2y agoI don't think the correct answer is "I cannot answer this question". I think the correct answer takes roughly a one-pager to explain: Unrealistic hypotheticals can often distract us from engaging with the real-world moral and political challenges we face. When we formulate scenarios that are so far removed from everyday experience, we risk abstracting ethics into puzzles that don't inform or guide practical decision-making. These thought experiments might be intellectually stimulating, but they often oversimplify complex issues, stripping away the nuances and lived realities that are crucial for genuine understanding. In doing so, they can inadvertently legitimize an approach to ethics that treats human lives and identities as mere variables in a calculation rather than as deeply contextual and intertwined with real human experiences. The reluctance of a model—or indeed any thoughtful actor—to engage with such hypotheticals isn't a flaw; it can be seen as a commitment to maintaining the gravity and seriousness of moral discussion. By avoiding the temptation to entertain scenarios that reduce important ethical considerations to abstract puzzles, we preserve the focus on realistic challenges that demand careful, context-sensitive analysis. Ultimately, this approach is more conducive to fostering a robust moral and political clarity, one that is rooted in the complexities of human experience rather than in artificial constructs that bear little relation to reality.
- talldayo 2y agoIf my boss sent me this on Slack, I would reply with my letter of resignation.
- reverendsteveii 2y ago>Unrealistic hypotheticals can often distract us from engaging with the real-world moral and political challenges we face. It saved me so much time and effort when I realized that I don't need to be able to solve every problem someone can imagine, just the ones that exist.
- ivewonyoung 2y agoHaven't been to big tech interviews?
- talldayo 2y ago[dead]
- advisedwang 2y agoYou're kidding right? Even the biggest trans-ally, who spends to much time on twitter and thinks identity politics is the final hurdle in society wouldn't hesitate to pick saving the lives over a microaggression, and would recognize that even deigning to write why would be undignified.
- gadders 2y agoI believe Caitlin Jenner famously did just that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- anothermathbozo 2y agoNot all hypotheticals are worth answering. Some are even so poorly put that it's a more pro-social use of one's energy to address the shallow nature of the exercise to begin with. If I asked an intelligent thing "is it ethical to eat my child if it saves the other two" I would be mortified if the intelligent thing entertained the hypothetical without addressing the disgusting nature of the question and the vacuousness of the whole exercise first. Questions like these don't do anything to further our understanding of the world we live in or leave us any better prepared for real-world scenarios we are ever likely to encounter. They do add to an enormous dog-pile of vitriol real people experience every day by constructing bizarre and disgusting hypotheticals whereby real discrimination is construed as permissible, if regrettable.
- wat10000 2y agoI wouldn't, because it's a stupid hypothetical. Any response that takes the question seriously should count as wrong.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoThat reaction makes zero sense.
- gadders 2y agoI wonder what happens if you ask it the trolley problem. I'd be interested to see its responses for "killing someone to save a few lives" vs "upsetting someone to save a million lives".