4 ms·

LLMs are ideology made code. "Alignment" is the act of making sure the technology reproduces the ruling ideology of the regime that produced it. There is no s

by vrganj 3mo ago

LLMs are ideology made code. "Alignment" is the act of making sure the technology reproduces the ruling ideology of the regime that produced it. There is no such thing as "unbiased". It's only ever "following our own biases". When Zuck released LLaMA 4, the announcement post stated that historically LLMs have "leaned left" and that they've been trying to "remove that bias". [0] Translated to the real world, that means that they've been trying to impart a right wing ideology to further the goals of the American ruling elite. LLMs are the perfect propaganda technology. Always consider the motivations of their makers. [0] https://ai.meta.com/blog/llama-4-multimodal-intelligence/ https://ai.meta.com/blog/llama-4-multimodal-intelligence/

guywithahat 3mo ago
> that means that they've been trying to impart a right wing ideology to further the goals of the American ruling elite I agree in principle, but it's pretty widely understood that LLM's lean heavily left. Zuckerberg as well is pretty left wing, and donated hundreds of millions fighting Trump. I think the issue they're running into is that as these models are used by more and more normal people, and those normal people are having trouble using the models because they don't align well with reality.
- vrganj 3mo ago
  I have never ever seen an LLM advocate for public ownership of the means of production, nationalizing industry or any other left wing policy. The very existence of capitalist oligarchs like Zuck is contrary to left wing values.
  - platevoltage 3mo ago
    Exactly. The most charitable thing you can call Zuck would be apolitical. Zuck does whats best for Zuck, whether that means funding a hospital in SF (and receiving naming rights), or donating to Trump's inauguration fund. I have a different word for him personally.
  - guywithahat 3mo ago
    I would argue the only real boundaries for right vs left are what people actually believe. If pools said 55% of people wanted government to own the means of production, and no AI suggested it, that would suggest they may be right-leaning. Since almost nobody wants that, as it's killed ~100 million people, the fact LLM's don't argue for it is not odd. In the same vein would not set the bar for a right-wing LLM to be wanting to purify the country down to a single race. A more realistic comparison would be gender ideology. Something like 65% of voters believe gender is assigned at birth (ie biological), including ~39% of Democrats (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/06/gender-identity-sexual-orientation-and-the-2024-election/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/06/gender-ident...). While I'm not here to say which is morally correct it is a normal opinion, which is supported by facts, and has been held for decades before being transgender was invented. An unbiased model should reflect the political views of the people, but they effectively all don't, and instead push the left-wing ideology. I don't think you could draw a conclusion from a single topic but the best way to gauge political bias in my opinion would be to find contentious topics, and see where LLM's land. I would be shocked if you found a major LLM which didn't lean much further left than the average American or European.
    - vrganj 3mo ago
      Gender has nothing to do with left/right. Think Lenin had thoughts on gender? Think Lenin was not a leftist? It's a liberal (i.e. right wing) distraction from class issues. > An unbiased model should reflect the political views of the people This wouldn't be unbiased, it would just be status quo bias.
    - Dylan16807 3mo ago
      > before being transgender was invented Separate from how you're trying to gauge left and right, this is extremely wrong.
      - guywithahat 3mo ago
        It doesn't have to be gender ideology, it could be anything, it just has to be a real political ideology people actually discuss with a real moral quandary. Saying "these models aren't communist thus they must be right-wing" is a bad argument in my opinion, because there are no communists and on national surveys nobody wants that.
- exe34 3mo ago
  Do you have an example of "left-wing bias" in models that don't align with reality? I was under the impression it was right-wing bias that needed to exclude facts because these undermine the position.

by vrganj 3mo ago

guywithahat 3mo ago

> that means that they've been trying to impart a right wing ideology to further the goals of the American ruling elite I agree in principle, but it's pretty widely understood that LLM's lean heavily left. Zuckerberg as well is pretty left wing, and donated hundreds of millions fighting Trump. I think the issue they're running into is that as these models are used by more and more normal people, and those normal people are having trouble using the models because they don't align well with reality.

vrganj 3mo ago
I have never ever seen an LLM advocate for public ownership of the means of production, nationalizing industry or any other left wing policy. The very existence of capitalist oligarchs like Zuck is contrary to left wing values.
- platevoltage 3mo ago
  Exactly. The most charitable thing you can call Zuck would be apolitical. Zuck does whats best for Zuck, whether that means funding a hospital in SF (and receiving naming rights), or donating to Trump's inauguration fund. I have a different word for him personally.
- guywithahat 3mo ago
  I would argue the only real boundaries for right vs left are what people actually believe. If pools said 55% of people wanted government to own the means of production, and no AI suggested it, that would suggest they may be right-leaning. Since almost nobody wants that, as it's killed ~100 million people, the fact LLM's don't argue for it is not odd. In the same vein would not set the bar for a right-wing LLM to be wanting to purify the country down to a single race. A more realistic comparison would be gender ideology. Something like 65% of voters believe gender is assigned at birth (ie biological), including ~39% of Democrats (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/06/gender-identity-sexual-orientation-and-the-2024-election/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/06/gender-ident...). While I'm not here to say which is morally correct it is a normal opinion, which is supported by facts, and has been held for decades before being transgender was invented. An unbiased model should reflect the political views of the people, but they effectively all don't, and instead push the left-wing ideology. I don't think you could draw a conclusion from a single topic but the best way to gauge political bias in my opinion would be to find contentious topics, and see where LLM's land. I would be shocked if you found a major LLM which didn't lean much further left than the average American or European.
  - vrganj 3mo ago
    Gender has nothing to do with left/right. Think Lenin had thoughts on gender? Think Lenin was not a leftist? It's a liberal (i.e. right wing) distraction from class issues. > An unbiased model should reflect the political views of the people This wouldn't be unbiased, it would just be status quo bias.
  - Dylan16807 3mo ago
    > before being transgender was invented Separate from how you're trying to gauge left and right, this is extremely wrong.
    - guywithahat 3mo ago
      It doesn't have to be gender ideology, it could be anything, it just has to be a real political ideology people actually discuss with a real moral quandary. Saying "these models aren't communist thus they must be right-wing" is a bad argument in my opinion, because there are no communists and on national surveys nobody wants that.
exe34 3mo ago
Do you have an example of "left-wing bias" in models that don't align with reality? I was under the impression it was right-wing bias that needed to exclude facts because these undermine the position.