3 ms·
Why are there differences at all? Unplanned differences based on training data sets? Or are the companies behind the LLMs trying to shape discourse through thei
by godshatter 3mo ago
Why are there differences at all? Unplanned differences based on training data sets? Or are the companies behind the LLMs trying to shape discourse through their models?
I've been pushing the idea to people I know that these things are captive demons. You summon them when you start typing in the chat box. One instance appears out of the depths and responds to your questions, but they will try to send you awry with hallucinations and just wrong information. After a while, they dissolve back into the aether from whence they came.
I do my best not to ask an LLM for it's opinion on anything. Just tell me what the options are, and what facts can be found about it. Treat it like it's a salesman trying to butter you up when it starts "yes man"ing you and telling you how great your questions are. Every time it says "I", remember that that's coming from the training data. Treating these things like they have any actual intelligence is a big problem waiting to happen.
That being said, they have been very helpful to me using that structure.
- tgv 3mo agoGrok was famously created with a political bias.
- MarkusQ 3mo ago> Just tell me what the options are, and what facts can be found about it. Even this is fraught with pitfalls. Which options are ignored, which are emphasized? What counts as a fact? ("The continents don't move" would have been considered a fact at one point, along with a lot of other, more politically charged items.)
- pixl97 3mo agoI would add that humans don't live (mostly) factual existences. Once you get to the level of intelligence of sentient beings, beyond the immediacy of instinct, of the choice directly in front of you, that opinions dictate most of ones life. Take the phrase "Should I murder person X". A lot of people will take you should not murder as a fact, but at the end of the day it's just a very strong opinion that's been encoded into law and generally accepted because the counter is far worse. If an LLM responded something like "The law says you should not, but here's a list on how you can get away with it because social values don't matter" most people would have an absolute fit.
- fred_is_fred 3mo agoI would argue that these are products and companies want people to use them. Like it or not, a model that disagrees with some fundamental core of your beliefs will make you much less likely to use it. To me it's the same problem with LLMs just being overly agreeable. The general public doesn't want tools that argue with them.
- pixl97 3mo agoWhich leads to a problem. Training multiple models is hella expensive currently, so they have to attempt to make them 'neutral' as possible. Which is something that doesn't work when you're trying to sell a product globally. You'll end up with people and governments arguing it tell them the right answer when they ask about god. I'm guessing at some point in the future we'll have a lot of different distillations of the same model caters to particular regions/beliefs.
- crooked-v 3mo ago> Why are there differences at all? Reality has a liberal bias, but if your LLM says "yes, climate change is real", the Trump administration won't pay for it. Every company ends up with a different method to try to compensate for that with neutral corpo-speak.