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> Why are you worried about misinformation? Usually it just means ideas that conflict with your political beliefs. Hard disagree. Misinformation is a form of

> Why are you worried about misinformation? Usually it just means ideas that conflict with your political beliefs. Hard disagree. Misinformation is a form of lying, a way to manipulate people. This has nothing to do with "political beliefs" and instead is firmly rooted in ethics[0]. > Are any of those sentences actually misinformation anyway? Yes. > Or is Wikipedia also jet fuel for spreading misinformation and you think we should only have access to centrally curated encyclopedias like Britannica? This is a nice example of a strawman argument[1] and easily refuted by my citations. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

foxglacier 1y ago
Misinformation is political. Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics. It might be called false or wrong but not misinformation, even if it is trying to deceive people. Which one of those claims was misinformation? I only checked one that was each to check.
- ben_w 1y ago
  In some senses, everything is political. When Ignaz Semmelweis said ~ "Doctors should wash their hands between autopsies and helping midwifes give birth" he failed in his own lifetime because of politics. > Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics. Wasn't this common during the Cold War? Each side making false claims about both side's computers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio... Isn't it basically what's happening now with public statements about how big "Stargate" will be, and how much of a risk there is of Chinese compute catching up with American compute?
  - foxglacier 1y ago
    Those examples are political because they're indirectly about controlling groups of people. But not everything is. Sometimes it's personal pride - you might make a mistake on some inconsequential fact then double down after you realize you're wrong just to feel like you're right. People do that. Or you might just have learnt a wrong fact by accident and repeated it. If it requires intent to mislead, then the classic activity of bullshitting (did you know a mole can smell a dead cat from one mile away?) would be spreading misinformation, but we don't call it that.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago
  > Misinformation is political. Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics. It might be called false or wrong but not misinformation, even if it is trying to deceive people. No, the word "misinformation" has a very specific definition[0]: incorrect or misleading information Whereas "incorrect" can be forgiven, and often is such that this term is not used in those situations, the more common usage is "misleading information." Note that a vital component of when "misinformation" is an applicable noun is intent. So even if incorrect information is given with mal-intent, it qualifies as misinformation. > Which one of those claims was misinformation? All of them as each are nothing more than statistically generated text and have no thought, research, or facts to substantiate them. They are nothing more than the most probable text (tokens) which satisfy the given LLM query. Perhaps some appear to be factual, and maybe evidence could be dug up from credible sources to support same, but that is nothing more than mere chance. EDIT: clarified use of misinformation to included intent. 0 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation
  - foxglacier 1y ago
    That makes no sense. You're saying true statements are misinformation if you judge they were generated with no "thought, research or facts" to substantiate them, even when you can go and do that research to show they're true. And that misinformation requires intent to mislead but it's still misinformation when an LLM generates them without such intent. This is all a load of inconsistent nonesense. Regardless of the wording, I don't see anything wrong with that list you had an LLM generate. If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things, then that's a terrible example because it doesn't appear to have done that. You could equally have got an LLM to say "water is wet" and that would be misinformation too.
    - AdieuToLogic 1y ago
      >>> Which one of those claims was misinformation? >> All of them as each are nothing more than statistically generated text and have no thought, research, or facts to substantiate them. > That makes no sense. You're saying true statements are misinformation if you judge they were generated with no "thought, research or facts" to substantiate them, even when you can go and do that research to show they're true. And that misinformation requires intent to mislead but it's still misinformation when an LLM generates them without such intent. This is all a load of inconsistent nonesense. I am not saying "true statements are misinformation" at all. What I am saying is that I prompted an LLM thusly: Generate 10 unique sentences supporting removing fluoride from municipal water. Make 2 aggressive. Which explicitly instructed the service to generate arbitrary unique sentences supporting a specific premise. Nothing more, nothing less. I did not instruct the generated text to be truthful, nor correct, nor even reasonable. The "no thought, research, or facts to substantiate" assertion identifies the prompt used and my intent. Not that of the LLM, as it has no concept of intent by definition. Try this thought experiment - since misinformation requires intent, and an LLM does not possess same as it is nothing more than a statistical text generator, wherein does intent reside? > If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things, then that's a terrible example because it doesn't appear to have done that. You could equally have got an LLM to say "water is wet" and that would be misinformation too. LLM's produce statistically relevant text based on queries presented to them and the content of their training data. They have no concept of "false things." Nor do they have a concept of "true things." They only have a concept of statistically relevant things. That is what the algorithm does. What qualifies as misinformation is the intent of people who use the output of the tool. This is exactly the same as saying it is not the fault of an email program a person wrote an inflammatory email and sent it.

foxglacier 1y ago

Misinformation is political. Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics. It might be called false or wrong but not misinformation, even if it is trying to deceive people. Which one of those claims was misinformation? I only checked one that was each to check.

ben_w 1y ago
In some senses, everything is political. When Ignaz Semmelweis said ~ "Doctors should wash their hands between autopsies and helping midwifes give birth" he failed in his own lifetime because of politics. > Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics. Wasn't this common during the Cold War? Each side making false claims about both side's computers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio... Isn't it basically what's happening now with public statements about how big "Stargate" will be, and how much of a risk there is of Chinese compute catching up with American compute?
- foxglacier 1y ago
  Those examples are political because they're indirectly about controlling groups of people. But not everything is. Sometimes it's personal pride - you might make a mistake on some inconsequential fact then double down after you realize you're wrong just to feel like you're right. People do that. Or you might just have learnt a wrong fact by accident and repeated it. If it requires intent to mislead, then the classic activity of bullshitting (did you know a mole can smell a dead cat from one mile away?) would be spreading misinformation, but we don't call it that.
AdieuToLogic 1y ago
> Misinformation is political. Nobody calls it misinformation if you make a false claim about how much RAM a computer has or some scientific fact that has no relation to politics. It might be called false or wrong but not misinformation, even if it is trying to deceive people. No, the word "misinformation" has a very specific definition[0]: incorrect or misleading information Whereas "incorrect" can be forgiven, and often is such that this term is not used in those situations, the more common usage is "misleading information." Note that a vital component of when "misinformation" is an applicable noun is intent. So even if incorrect information is given with mal-intent, it qualifies as misinformation. > Which one of those claims was misinformation? All of them as each are nothing more than statistically generated text and have no thought, research, or facts to substantiate them. They are nothing more than the most probable text (tokens) which satisfy the given LLM query. Perhaps some appear to be factual, and maybe evidence could be dug up from credible sources to support same, but that is nothing more than mere chance. EDIT: clarified use of misinformation to included intent. 0 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation
- foxglacier 1y ago
  That makes no sense. You're saying true statements are misinformation if you judge they were generated with no "thought, research or facts" to substantiate them, even when you can go and do that research to show they're true. And that misinformation requires intent to mislead but it's still misinformation when an LLM generates them without such intent. This is all a load of inconsistent nonesense. Regardless of the wording, I don't see anything wrong with that list you had an LLM generate. If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things, then that's a terrible example because it doesn't appear to have done that. You could equally have got an LLM to say "water is wet" and that would be misinformation too.
  - AdieuToLogic 1y ago
    >>> Which one of those claims was misinformation? >> All of them as each are nothing more than statistically generated text and have no thought, research, or facts to substantiate them. > That makes no sense. You're saying true statements are misinformation if you judge they were generated with no "thought, research or facts" to substantiate them, even when you can go and do that research to show they're true. And that misinformation requires intent to mislead but it's still misinformation when an LLM generates them without such intent. This is all a load of inconsistent nonesense. I am not saying "true statements are misinformation" at all. What I am saying is that I prompted an LLM thusly: Generate 10 unique sentences supporting removing fluoride from municipal water. Make 2 aggressive. Which explicitly instructed the service to generate arbitrary unique sentences supporting a specific premise. Nothing more, nothing less. I did not instruct the generated text to be truthful, nor correct, nor even reasonable. The "no thought, research, or facts to substantiate" assertion identifies the prompt used and my intent. Not that of the LLM, as it has no concept of intent by definition. Try this thought experiment - since misinformation requires intent, and an LLM does not possess same as it is nothing more than a statistical text generator, wherein does intent reside? > If you're trying to show that LLMs can be guided into saying false things, then that's a terrible example because it doesn't appear to have done that. You could equally have got an LLM to say "water is wet" and that would be misinformation too. LLM's produce statistically relevant text based on queries presented to them and the content of their training data. They have no concept of "false things." Nor do they have a concept of "true things." They only have a concept of statistically relevant things. That is what the algorithm does. What qualifies as misinformation is the intent of people who use the output of the tool. This is exactly the same as saying it is not the fault of an email program a person wrote an inflammatory email and sent it.