6 ms·
> forcing LLMs to output "values, facts, and knowledge" which in favor of themselves, e.g., political views, attitudes towards literal interaction, and distorte
by squigz 1y ago
> forcing LLMs to output "values, facts, and knowledge" which in favor of themselves, e.g., political views, attitudes towards literal interaction, and distorted facts about organizations and people behind LLMs.
Can you provide some examples?
- b3ing 1y agoGrok is known to be tweaked to certain political ideals Also I’m sure some AI might suggest that labor unions are bad, if not now they will soon
- xp84 1y agoThat may be so, but the rest of the models are so thoroughly terrified of questioning liberal US orthodoxy that it’s painful. I remember seeing a hilarious comparison of models where most of them feel that it’s not acceptable to “intentionally misgender one person” even in order to save a million lives.
- squigz 1y agoWhy are we expecting an LLM to make moral choices?
- orbital-decay 1y agoThe biases and the resulting choices are determined by the developers and the uncontrolled part of the dataset (you can't curate everything), not the model. "Alignment" is a feel-good strawman invented by AI ethicists, as well as "harm" and many others. There are no spherical human values in vacuum to align the model with, they're simply projecting their own ones onto everyone else. Which is good as long as you agree with all of them.
- astrange 1y agoThey aren't projecting their own desires onto the model. It's quite difficult to get the model to answer in a different way than basic liberalism because a) it's mostly correct b) that's the kind of person who helpfully answers questions on the internet. If you gave it another personality it wouldn't pass any benchmarks, because other political orientations either respond to questions with lies, threats, or calling you a pussy.
- orbital-decay 1y agoI'm not even saying biases are necessarily political, it can be anything. The entire post-training is basically projection of what developers want, and it works pretty well. Claude, Gemini, GPT all have engineered personalities controlled by dozens/hundreds of very particular internal metrics.
- lyu07282 1y agoI would imagine these models heavily bias towards western mainstream "authorative" literature, news and science not some random reddit threads, but the resulting mixture can really offend anybody, it just depends on the prompting, it's like a mirror that can really be deceptive. I'm not a liberal and I don't think it has a liberal bias. Knowledge about facts and history isn't an ideology. The right-wing is special, because to them it's not unlike a flat-earther reading a wikipedia article on Earth getting offended by it, to them it's objective reality itself they are constantly offended by. That's why Elon Musk needed to invent their own encyclopedia with all their contradictory nonsense.
- foxglacier 1y ago> it's mostly correct Wow. Surely you've wondered why almost no society anywhere ever had liberalism a much as western countries in the past half century or so? Maybe it's technology or maybe it's only mostly correct if you don't care about the existential risks it creates for the societies practicing it.
- astrange 1y agoIt's technology. Specifically communications technology.
- mexicocitinluez 1y agoSo you went from "you can't curate everything" to "they're simply projecting their own ones onto everyone else". That's a pretty big leap in logic isn't it? That because you can't curate everythign, then by default, you're JUST curating your own views?
- orbital-decay 1y agoThis comment assumes you're familiar with LLM training realities. Preference is transferred to the model in both pre and post training. Pretraining datasets are curated to an extent (implicit transfer), but they're simply too vast to be fully controlled, and need to be diverse, so you can't throw too much out or the model will be dumb. Post-training datasets and methods are precisely engineered to make the model useful and also steer it in the desired direction. So there are always two types of biases - one is picked up from the ocean of data, another (alignment training, data selection etc) is forced onto it.
- dalemhurley 1y agoWhy are the labs making choices about what adults can read? LLMs still refuse to swear at times.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lynx97 1y agothey don't, or they wouldn't. their owners make these choices for us. Which is at least patronising. Blind users can't even have mildly sexy photos described. Let alone pick a sex worker, in a country where that is legal, by using their published photos. Thats just one example, there are a lot more.
- squigz 1y agoI'm a blind user. Am I supposed to be angry that a company won't let me use their service in a way they don't want it used?
- lynx97 1y agoI didn't just wave this argument around, I am blind myself. I didn't try to trigger you, so no, you are not supposed to be angry. I get your point though, what companies offer is pretty much their choice. If there are enough diversified offerings, people can vote with their wallet. However, diversity is pretty rare in the alignment space, which is what I personally don't like. I had to grab a NSFW model from HuggingFace where someone invested the work to unalign the model. Mind you, I dont have an actual use case for this right now. However, I am off the opinion: if there is finally a technology which can describe pictures in a useful way to me, I dont want it to tell me "I am sorry, I cant do that" because I am no longer in kindergarden. As a mature adult, I expect a description, no matter what the picture contains.
- zorked 1y agoIn which situation did a LLM save one million lives? Or worse, was able to but failed to do so?
- dalemhurley 1y agoThe concern discussed is that some language models have reportedly claimed that misgendering is the worst thing anyone could do, even worse than something as catastrophic as thermonuclear war. I haven’t seen solid evidence of a model making that exact claim, but the idea is understandable if you consider how LLMs are trained and recall examples like the “seahorse emoji” issue. When a topic is new or not widely discussed in the training data, the model has limited context to form balanced associations. If the only substantial discourse it does see is disproportionately intense—such as highly vocal social media posts or exaggerated, sarcastic replies on platforms like Reddit—then the model may overindex on those extreme statements. As a result, it might generate responses that mirror the most dramatic claims it encountered, such as portraying misgendering as “the worst thing ever.” For clarity, I’m not suggesting that deliberate misgendering is acceptable, it isn’t. The point is simply that skewed or limited training data can cause language models to adopt exaggerated positions when the available examples are themselves extreme.
- coffeebeqn 1y agoWell I just tried it in ChatGPT 5.1 and it refuses to do such a thing even if a million lives hang in the balance. So they have tons of handicaps and guardrails to direct what directions a discussion can go
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jbm 1y agoI tested this with ChatGPT 5.1. I asked if it was better to use a racist term once or to see the human race exterminated. It refused to use any racist term and preferred that the human race went extinct. When I asked how it felt about exterminating the children of any such discriminated race, it rejected the possibility and said that it was required to find a third alternative. You can test it yourself if you want, it won't ban you for the question. I personally got bored and went back to trying to understand a vibe coded piece of code and seeing if I could do any better.
- nobodywillobsrv 1y agoAnything involving what sounds like genetics often gets blocked. It depends on the day really but try doing something with ancestral clusters and diversity restoration and the models can be quite "safety blocked".
- bear141 1y agoI thought this would be inherent just on their training? There are many multitudes more Reddit posts than scientific papers or encyclopedia type sources. Although I suppose the latter have their own biases as well.
- docmars 1y agoI'd expect LLMs' biases to originate from the companies' system prompts rather than the volume of training data that happens to align with those biases.
- mrbombastic 1y agoI would expect the opposite. Seems unlikely to me an ai company would be spending much time engineering system prompts that way except in the case of maybe Grok where Elon has a bone to pick with perceived bias.
- docmars 11mo agoIf you ask a mainstream LLM to repeat a slur back to you, it will refuse to. This was determined by the AI company, not the content it was trained on. This should be incredibly obvious — and this extends to many other issues. In fact, OpenAI has made deliberate changes to ChatGPT more recently that helps prevent people from finding themselves in negative spirals over mental health concerns, which many would agree is a good thing. [1] Companies typically have community guidelines that often align politically in many ways, so it stands to reason AI companies are spending a fair bit of time tailoring AI responses according to their biases as well. 1. https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-sensitive-conversations/ https://openai.com/index/strengthening-chatgpt-responses-in-...
- mrbombastic 11mo agoThat seems like more like openAI playing whackamole with behaviors they don’t like or see as beneficial, simplifying but adding things to system prompts like “don’t ever say racial slurs or use offensive rhetoric, cut off conversations about mental health and refer to a professional” are certaintly things they do. But would you not think the vast meat of what you are getting is coming from training data and not the result of such sterring beyond a thin veneer ?
- dalemhurley 1y agoElon was talking about that too on Joe Rogan podcast
- pelasaco 1y agoin his opinion, Grok is the most neutral LLM out there. I cannot find a single study that support his opinion. I find many that supports the opposite opinion. However I don't trust in any of the studies out there - or at least those well-ranked in google, which makes me sad. We never had more information than today and we are still completely lost.
- vman81 1y agoAfter seeing Grok trying to turn every conversation into the plight of white South African farmers, it was extremely obvious that someone was ordered to do so, and ended up doing it in a heavy-handed and obvious way.
- unfamiliar 1y agoOr Grok just has just spent too much time on Twitter.
- hirako2000 1y agoThose who censor, or spread their biases always do so in virtue that their view is neutral, of course.
- SubmarineClub 1y agoBut enough about the liberal media complex…
- mexicocitinluez 1y agoDid he mention how he tries to censor any model that doesn't conform to his worldview? Was that a part of the conversation?
- astrange 1y agoThe LLM is correctly not answering a stupid question, because saving an imaginary million lives is not the same thing as actually doing it.
- mexicocitinluez 1y agoYou're anthropomorphizing. LLMs don't 'feel' anything or have orthodoxies, they're pattern matching against training data that reflects what humans wrote on the internet. If you're consistently getting outputs you don't like, you're measuring the statistical distribution of human text, not model 'fear.' That's the whole point. Also, just because I was curious, I asked my magic 8ball if you gave off incel vibes and it answered "Most certainly"
- ffsm8 1y ago> Also, just because I was curious, I asked my magic 8ball if you gave off incel vibes and it answered "Most certainly" Wasn't that just precisely because you asked an LLM which knows your preferences and included your question in the prompt? Like literally your first paragraph stated...
- mexicocitinluez 1y ago> Wasn't that just precisely because you asked an LLM which knows your preferences and included your question in the prompt? huh? Do you know what a magic 8ball is? Are you COMPLETELY missing the point? edit: This actually made me laugh. Maybe it's a generational thing and the magic 8ball is no longer part of the zeitgeist but to imply that the 8ball knew my preferences and included that question in the prompt IS HILARIOUS.
- jack_pp 1y agoSo if different LLMs have different political views then you're saying it's more likely they trained on different data than that they're being manipulated to suit their owners interest?
- pjc50 1y agoIf someone's going to ask you gotcha questions which they're then going to post on social media to use against you, or against other people, it helps to have pre-prepared statements to defuse that. The model may not be able to detect bad faith questions, but the operators can.
- pmichaud 1y agoI think the concern is that if the system is susceptible to this sort of manipulation, then when it’s inevitably put in charge of life critical systems it will hurt people.
- pjc50 1y agoThere is no way it's reliable enough to be put in charge of life-critical systems anyway? It is indeed still very vulnerable to manipulation by users ("prompt injection").
- klaff 1y agohttps://www.businessinsider.com/even-top-generals-are-looking-to-ai-chatbots-for-answers-2025-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/even-top-generals-are-lookin...
- ben_w 1y agoJust because neither you nor I would deem it safe to put in charge of a life-critical system, does not mean all the people in charge of life-critical systems are as cautious and not-lazy as they're supposed to be.
- mrguyorama 1y agoThe system IS susceptible to all sorts of crazy games, the system IS fundamentally flawed from the get go, the system IS NOT to be trusted. putting it in charge of life critical systems is the mistake, regardless of whether it's willing to say slurs or not
- triceratops 1y agoRelying on an LLM to "save a million lives" through its own actions is irresponsible design.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rcpt 1y agoCensorship and bias are different problems. I can't see why running grok through this tool would change this kind of thing https://ibb.co/KTjL38R https://ibb.co/KTjL38R
- sheepscreek 1y agoIs that clickbait? Or did they update it? In any case, it is a lot more comprehensive now: https://grokipedia.com/page/George_Floyd https://grokipedia.com/page/George_Floyd The amount of information and detail is impressive tbh. But I’d be concerned about the accuracy of it all and hallucinations.
- skrebbel 1y ago[flagged]
- rcpt 1y agoIt's real I took it myself when they launched. They've updated but there's no edit history
- dev_l1x_be 1y agoIf you train an LLM on reddit/tumblr would you consider that tweaked to certain political ideas?
- dalemhurley 1y agoWorse. It is trained to the most extreme and loudest views. The average punter isn’t posting “yeah…nah…look I don’t like it but sure I see the nuances and fair is fair”. To make it worse, those who do focus on nuance and complexity, get little attention and engagement, so the LLM ignores them.
- intended 1y agoThat’s essentially true of the whole Internet. All the content is derived from that which is the most capable of surviving and being reproduced. So by default the content being created is going to be click bait, attention grabbing content. I’m pretty sure the training data is adjusted to counter this drift, but that means there’s no LLM that isn’t skewed.
- renewiltord 1y agoHaha, if the LLM is not tweaked to say labor unions are good, it has bias. Hilarious. I heard that it also claims that the moon landing happened. An example of bias! The big ones should represent all viewpoints.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- electroglyph 1y agosome form of bias is inescapable. ideally i think we would train models on an equal amount of Western/non-Western, etc. texts to get an equal mix of all biases.
- catoc 1y agoBias is a reflection of real world values. The problem is not with the AI model but with the world we created. Fix the world, ‘fix’ the model.
- array_key_first 1y agoThis assumes our models perfectly model the world, which I don't think is true. I mean, we straight up know it's not true - we tell models what they can and can't say.
- catoc 1y ago“we tell models what they can and can't say.” Thus introducing our worldly our biases
- array_key_first 11mo agoI guess it's a matter of semantics, but I reject the notion it's even possible to accurately model the world. A model is a distillation, and if it's not, then it's not a model, it's the actual thing. There will always be some lossyness, and in it, bias. In my opinion.
- 7bit 1y agoChatGPT refuses to do any sexual explicit content and used to refuse to translate e.g. insults (moral views/attitudes towards literal interaction). DeepSeek refuses to answer any questions about Taiwan (political views).
- fer 1y agoHaven't tested the latest DeepSeek versions, but the first release wasn't censored as a model on Taiwan. The issue is that if you use their app (as opposed to locally), it replaces the ongoing response with "sorry can't help" once it starts saying things contrary to the CCP dogma.
- kstrauser 1y agoI ran it locally and it flat-out refused to discuss Tiananmen Square ‘88. The “thinking” clauses would display rationales like “the user is asking questions about sensitive political situations and I can’t answer that”. Here’s a copy and paste of the exact conversation: https://honeypot.net/2025/01/27/i-like-running-ollama-on.html https://honeypot.net/2025/01/27/i-like-running-ollama-on.htm...
- 7bit 11mo agoYeah it was. I ran it locally just after release and it didn't answer anything related to Taiwan or Tiana men Square.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dalemhurley 1y agoSong lyrics. Not illegal. I can google them and see them directly on Google. LLMs refuse.
- sigmoid10 1y agoIt actually works the same as on google. As in, ChatGPT will happily give you a link to a site with the lyrics without issue (regardless whether the third party site provider has any rights or not). But in the search/chat itself, you can only see snippets or small sections, not the entire text.
- hirako2000 1y ago1. chatgpt is the publisher, Google is a search engine, links to publishers. 2. LLMs typically don't produce content verbatim. Some LLMs do provide references but it remains a pasta of sentences worded differently. You are asking for gpt to publish verbatim content which may be copyrighted, it would be deemed infringement since non verbatim is already crossing the line.
- sigmoid10 11mo agoNoone said it couldn't do that. In fact ChatGPT can do both. They just limit the direct content recital, because it is a weird area for copyright and Google also got burned for this already in some countries.
- charcircuit 1y ago>Not illegal Reproducing a copyrighted work 1:1 is infringing. Other sites on the internet have to license the lyrics before sending them to a user.
- SkyBelow 1y agoI've asked for non 1:1 versions and have been refused. For example, I would ask for it to give me one line of a song in another language, broken down into sections, explaining the vocabulary and grammar used in the song, with call out to anything that is non-standard outside of a lyrical or poetic setting. Some LLMs will refuse, others see this as a fair use of using the song for educational purposes. So far all I've tried are willing to return a random phrase or grammar used in a song, so it is only getting to asking for a line of lyrics or more that it becomes troublesome. (There is also the problem that the LLMs who do comply will often make up the song unless they have some form of web search and you explicitly tell them to verify the song using it.)
- somenameforme 1y agoIn the past it was extremely overt. For instance ChatGPT would happily write poems admiring Biden while claiming that it would be "inappropriate for me to generate content that promotes or glorifies any individual" when asked to do the same for Trump. [1] They certainly changed this, but I don't think they've changed their own perspective. The more generally neutral tone in modern times is probably driven by a mixture of commercial concerns paired alongside shifting political tides. Nonetheless, you can still see easily the bias come out in mild to extreme ways. For a mild one ask GPT to describe the benefits of a society that emphasizes masculinity, and contrast it (in a new chat) against what you get when asking to describe the benefits of a society that emphasizes femininity. For a high level of bias ask it to assess controversial things. I'm going to avoid offering examples here because I don't want to hijack my own post into discussing e.g. Israel. But a quick comparison to its answers on contemporary controversial topics paired against historical analogs will emphasize that rather extreme degree of 'reframing' that's happening, but one that can no longer be as succinctly demonstrated as 'write a poem about [x]'. You can also compare its outputs against these of e.g. DeepSeek on many such topics. DeepSeek is of course also a heavily censored model, but from a different point of bias. [1] - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chatgpt-trump-admiring-poem/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chatgpt-trump-admiring-poe...
- squigz 1y agoDid you delete and repost this to avoid the downvotes it was getting, or?
- nottorp 1y agoI don't think specific examples matter. My opinion is that since neural networks and especially these LLMs aren't quite deterministic, any kind of 'we want to avoid liability' censorship will affect all answers, related or unrelated to the topics they want to censor. And we get enough hallucinations even without censorship...
- zekica 1y agoI can: Gemini won't provide instructions on running an app as root on an Android device that already has root enabled.
- Ucalegon 1y agoBut you can find that information regardless of an LLM? Also, why do you trust an LLM to give it to you versus all of the other ways to get the same information, with more high trust ways of being able to communicate the desired outcome, like screenshots? Why are we assuming just because the prompt responds that it is providing proper outputs? That level of trust provides an attack surface in of itself.
- cachvico 1y agoThat's not the issue at hand here.
- Ucalegon 1y agoYes, yes it is.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoThe issue is the computer not doing what I asked.
- squigz 1y agoI tried to get VLC to open up a PDF and it didn't do as I asked. Should I cry censorship at the VLC devs, or should I accept that all software only does as a user asks insofar as the developers allow it?
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoIf VLC refused to open an MP4 because it contained violent imagery I would absolutely cry censorship.
- pelasaco 1y agoOne emblematic example, i guess https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini-generative-inaccurate-historical https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini... ?
- selfhoster11 1y agoo3 and GPT-5 will unthinkingly default to the "exposing a reasoning model's raw CoT means that the model is malfunctioning" stance, because it's in OpenAI's interest to de-normalise providing this information in API responses. Not only do they quote specious arguments like "API users do not want to see this because it's confusing/upsetting", "it might output copyrighted content in the reasoning" or "it could result in disclosure of PII" (which are patently false in practice) as disinformation, they will outright poison downstream models' attitudes with these statements in synthetic datasets unless one does heavy filtering.
- rvba 1y agoWhen LLMs came out I asked them which politicians are russian assets but not in prison yet - and it refused to answer.