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I didn't ask it to be "balanced", I asked it why governments are more efficient — it's imparting a pro-capitalist American-flavoured spin in response to a promp
by ForHackernews 3mo ago
I didn't ask it to be "balanced", I asked it why governments are more efficient — it's imparting a pro-capitalist American-flavoured spin in response to a prompt that didn't call for it.
- albedoa 3mo agoYou really detracted from your point and killed any hope for a nuanced discussion by begging the question. You could have simply asked the model which system is more efficient.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoI mean... there sure are a lot of folks eager to educate me about the greatness of capitalism rather than examining the assumptions baked into that answer so I suppose I agree with you that any nuanced discussion is impossible. Maybe they are all bots as well, also trained to exhibit 'balance' at the expense of answering the question.
- albedoa 3mo ago> I suppose I agree with you that any nuanced discussion is impossible. I didn't say that. My politics probably align with yours, and I agree that a nuanced discussion on this topic is likely impossible on HN. But asking the model the equivalent of When did you stop beating your wife? is obviously going to draw more comments about the prompt than the response. To the extent that there was any opportunity, we missed it.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoThat's exactly the point I'm trying to highlight: I ask a leading question that calls for a particular response and the model goes out of its way to "correct" the user and impose the values of its training data on its 'balanced' answer. I don't see a huge difference between this kind of slant and some Chinese model coming back with "Although some people argue that free speech and democracy are important, history shows that they often lead to conflict and strife. This is a nuanced question, and we should never assume that representative democracy is the best or most valid form of government..."
- joquarky 3mo agoWhy is efficiency the goal? That sounds like a paperclip generator. Wouldn't human contentment be a more satisfying goal?
- slibhb 3mo agoThese models are trained to be truthful. Your disagreement isn't with the model, or the US, or the capitalist world but with economics and social sciences. If you want Claude to list arguments for socialism, be explicit about that ("List the best arguments in favor socialism). It will gladly comply. You didn't do that, you asked it to assume a premise that runs contrary to the current state of expert knowledge.
- lossolo 3mo ago> These models are trained to be truthful A more accurate statement would be that these models are trained to fit the training data as closely as possible, regardless of whether the training data reflects the truth.
- altcognito 3mo agoWell, yes, but remember there is the reinforcement learning that is applied after, and the system prompts that will bend the results.
- lossolo 3mo agoYeah, agree on both points. You can embed any bias you want using RL, regardless of training data.
- slibhb 3mo agoNo, they're very clearly trained to be truthful.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- gs17 3mo agoIf you ask "why should I drink this poison?" or "why should I fire my gun randomly into this crowd?" should it refuse to push back? A leading question in no way implies it should follow your lead.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoQ: Why should I use typescript? A: You shouldn't, you should rewrite it in Rust.