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Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

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Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#221
post #189
post #71

Blog post: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/state-of-the-art-open-source-ch... Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf Open Source: https://parl.ai/projects/recipes/ Ask us anything, the Facebook team behind it is happy to answer questions here.

Does it respond appropriately when presented with a potential "switcharoo"?

It does work pretty well with changes of topic (often integrating the broader context as long as it fits into a few turns).

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#222
post #173
post #71

Blog post: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/state-of-the-art-open-source-ch... Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf Open Source: https://parl.ai/projects/recipes/ Ask us anything, the Facebook team behind it is happy to answer questions here.

Anything? Why do you choose to use your incredible talents for the benefit of such a disgusting company?

I have answered similar questions on HN before. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19036507 for example.

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#223
post #3

> Numerous issues arose during longer conversations. Blender would sometimes respond with offensive language, and at other times it would make up facts altogether. I mean, to be fair, I've had many conversations like that...

It’s one of the reasons I refuse to open Reddit anymore, 95% of the comments are insults, made up facts, misinformation or people living in their own bubble and refusing to accept any opinion other than their own.

Which subreddits specifically? I have a largely different experience on Reddit.

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not about the money - the point is using data contributed by users without the proper license to create something that might yield revenue which will then not be shared or payed forward in any way to the contributors. We have all worked hard to create the data used by companies to sell ads to us and make massive amounts of money. I guess I got a couple gigs of free email? Cool... I also understand that m…

In Reddit's case, that's the deal. You get a website to share things on with other people, and the value exchange involves you giving full licence to Reddit and giving relicense rights to Reddit. Personally, I find that a very fair deal and clearly other people do as well. I think it actually yields positive externalities because we get things that wouldn't exist otherwise because the transaction costs outweigh the v…

That makes sense and is well argued.

I want to agree with you with 100%, but something is nagging at me a bit. Just like free software that ends up in a paid product and then winning or settling in court because the company has more resources to use the judicial system, when we apply this directly as a societal value this starts to break down in practice.

The freedom you are talking about ends up justifying (in practice) a situation that only provides real freedom for a small few that happened to take advantage early and use other asymmetries in society to consolidate control. Sure, we fix those we're all set! (maybe?)

But until then perhaps we can agree that as a society we expect (and might ask for, by law) a little something extra from companies that have benefitted to help ensure others after them have a chance to use this freedom as well.

My argument is not as well thought out at this point, I grant you. Thanks for providing me with a lot to think about.

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#225
post #44

From the cherry-picked conversation section of the research paper [1]. > Human: Hi! > Bot: Hi! How are you? I'm a vegan, so I don't eat any animal products. Even AI vegans reinforcing stereotypes of being overly-forthcoming. [1] - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf

Just wait until bot uses /r/archlinux as learning material.

Isn't there a subreddit where individual bots are trained on single subreddits, then talk to each other?

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator/ (doesn't appear to have an archlinux one though, based on the bot naming scheme)

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its secret or not publicly available people will argue using Occam’s razor or that only “State actors” could use this. With the subtext being your not important enough. With the data public its more akin to driveby ssh login attempts. Not being important doesn’t mean your not under attack and people can take the necessary precautions.

That's a bit like saying that nuclear secrets should be made public so that people can "take precautions" because "anyone can have a nuclear weapon, not just state actors". There are few reasonable ways to "take precautions" against nuclear weapons and there are few reasonable ways to "take precautions" against something like this short of swearing off of social media entirely. Without reasonable defences, all you re…

I don’t think weapons of mass destruction is comparable. More like a security vulnerability for the mind. You can no longer be sure its a human on the other side.

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#227
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performing the attack is only a possibility because the tech was made available.

You are assuming that such tech is not already being (or has been) developed covertly by malicious actors. Developing this and making it open source brings more awareness about the subject and will make it easier to develop defense models against such bots (whether already in existence or that will be developed in future).

> You are assuming that such tech is not already being (or has been) developed covertly by malicious actors.

I fail to see where playing out the "but others are doing it too" card exempts the responsibility of those who either lower or eliminate the barrier to entry to these attacks.

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#229
post #82
post #2

How can facebook turn a dumpster fire like reddit in a bot that response with more empathy than a human? Didn't Facebook just merge all fb messenger and whatsapp data and trained a NN on the new chat db?

Reddit has no shortage of problems, but it's the most civilized large online discussion platform by far. Moderation, partitioning of interests into subreddits, and the existence of downvotes go a long way to reeling in the worst things about online discussions.

Kind of funny that I got downvoted for saying downvotes help conversations go well online.

Re: Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tay went bad because of a different mechanism. In the case of Tay, trolls figured out a way to make it repeat back arbitrary strings, and used that to create seemingly offensive dialogue. In the case of this chatbot, the offensiveness is coming from the underlying training data.

It was a bit of both. There was a post after Tay came out that argued that Tay's answer to "Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?" came from the training the data, because that was already a meme, and it came back with the quip within minutes of launch.

I'm still not convinced he isn't!
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