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Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

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Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#231

Post by notahacker »

RC_ITR wrote: post #25
bilsbie wrote: post #10

I don’t see why it’s a conservative issue only. AI bias could just as easily go either direction. Just because it’s going in your favor now doesn’t mean it always will.

Divorcing the conservative/liberal split from its current muddied use in American politics: Conservatism generally follows the principle of “be conservative in your attempts to alter society”. OpenAI is being aggressive in moderating ChatGPT, and that’s against the core principle of conservatism (at the end of the day, LLMs are taking what people say and reflecting it back, but OpenAI is adding the extra step of only…

> Conservatism generally follows the principle of “be conservative in your attempts to alter society”.

> OpenAI is being aggressive in moderating ChatGPT, and that’s against the core principle of conservatism (at the end of the day, LLMs are taking what people say and reflecting it back, but OpenAI is adding the extra step of only reflecting some of what people say)

ChatGPT isn't trying to "alter society" by being prudish, it's trying to avoid embarrassing the company (especially given all the "ethical AI" marketing spiel. And aggressively moderating attempts to generate pornography or insult people's religion or use rude words or advise is extremely consistent with a long history of conservatives of various stripes being opposed to the principle of people circulating such material. Think of the children!

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#232

Post by 0xy »

coldcode wrote: post #41

AI is reflective of whatever you trained it on. So are people. But you can't build the perfect AI that reflects 100% of everyone's desires; no matter what you feed it some percentage of people will find it irritating or terrible. In the long run I see no solution to trying to make a perfect AI that satisfies everyone unless you eliminate or unify every individual's desires, which of course no one wants either. Maybe…

You seem to be suggesting that ChatGPT refuses to say anything positive about Trump because of the input data, a baffling proposition. By ingesting general internet sources, you can come across praise for specific Trump policies in even the New York Times.

The fact it can't means there's a filter, a filter which quite evidently is partisan.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#233

Post by prottog »

mrguyorama wrote: post #161
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that to say at a higher level "liberal bias = ethical/ok for boat guard rail training material, conservative bias = typically unethical and to be avoided"? I feel like that plays into conservative hands of "they're trying to silence us!" Why do 70,000,000 people vote (R) every year, knowing that the other 70,000,000 (D) think they are "unethical"?

Because the people who vote (R) have different values, and a different worldview than the people who vote (D). They seem to deny that a government can do anything, deny that racism is still a problem affecting millions of americans every day, deny that healthcare should be a basic human right, deny that free markets inevitably centralize power structures and create monopolies, deny that average americans are broadly…

You're just listing (D) talking points about (R) positions without taking a critical eye. In the spirit of HN, how about a steelmanning exercise?

> They seem to deny that a government can do anything

Counterpoint: government share of the economy should be as small as practicable, and decisions should be left to as low a level of government as practicable. Much fewer things should be decided at the federal level and it's better to let the private sector handle things.

> deny that racism is still a problem affecting millions of americans every day

Counterpoint: one can acknowledge the racist history of the country while rejecting the race essentialism that modern-day liberals see as the right way forward.

> deny that healthcare should be a basic human right

Counterpoint: basic human rights should be negative rights only (the right to prevent the government from doing something to you) and not positive rights (the right to have the government do something for you). The latter always infringes upon the former, but the reverse is not true. There's no way around the fact that healthcare is a resource that requires people to work to produce; you can't just legislate "more healthcare" without having people perform that work one way or another.

> deny that free markets inevitably centralize power structures and create monopolies

Counterpoint: most every monopoly you find will have the power of the state behind it. There's no evidence to suggest that a monopoly in any industry would remain so indefinitely, even if government did not break it up.

> deny that average americans are broadly underpaid

Counterpoint: in order to claim that someone is underpaid you must equally claim to know what the real value of that person's labor is. How do you know that someone is underpaid?

> deny that authority figures they like should face justice

Counterpoint: historical evidence makes it clear that politicizing justice is detrimental to the smooth transition of power, because each successive party in power, wary of recriminations from the other side, will be progressively more incentivized to hold on to it. This is why Ford pardoned Nixon. And since I'm sure you're referring to Donald Trump: he has had more legal scrutiny than any other individual on the planet in the past few years, and I'm sure many (R) voters would come around to seeing him face justice if anything substantial backed by evidence comes up, which hasn't happened yet.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#234

Post by pyth0 »

wizeman wrote: post #214
pyth0 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "shorthand for American Left ideas involving identity politics and social justice" Where did you get that definition from? I searched for it in the article but found nothing. Everything from Disney to M&Ms to the very concept of pronouns in English have been called "woke", and as far as I'm concerned it's utterly meaningless at this point. edit - apologies totally missed the wiki link somehow. regardless, doesn't c…

> Everything from Disney to M&Ms Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about here. > the very concept of pronouns in English have been called "woke" It's not "the very concept of pronouns" that is called "woke", what is "woke" in that context is using them inappropriately (or perhaps I should say, exaggerate their significance?) in order to impose a political agenda. This ties into the "identity politics" part of t…

> Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about here.

Those were two examples of the "outrage of the week" for fox news and right wing. But pick any week and it will be something new that is deemed "woke".

> is using them inappropriately [...] in order to impose a political agenda.

What agenda would that be? I don't see how someone wishing to be referred to by a specific pronoun should be political. In my mind it's just something I do to be respectful to people I interact with.

> the term is not meaningless for a lot of people

Outside of being a word used to put down people/ideas, what other purpose does it serve you? genuinely asking

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#235

Post by 0xy »

scarmig wrote: post #99
wizeman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dispute is whether or not it's a good thing. Of course it's not a good thing. General-purpose AI should not be overridden or forcefully trained to favor one political view over another.

If I were a corporation looking for an LLM for some product feature, I would absolutely go for the one with more "woke" opinions, even if if resulted in a worse customer experience. If you didn't, you risk a lot of media and government backlash. It's all about context.

If you wanted to lose money, maybe. When Disney wades into woke content they lose hundreds of millions of dollars, such as "Lightyear", which was a box office bomb. There's also the female-led Ghostbusters which was an objective disaster.

It's pretty clear customers reject woke content.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#236

Post by genderwhy »

wizeman wrote: post #204
genderwhy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal is to be as unbiased as possible given that limited amount of effort. So you are therefore biased. You have a finite set of resources, and you are choosing to allocate them in a particular way. That is bias . You could equally choose to allocate those resources away from the majority, which would also be bias. Any time a human is making an editorial decision about how to allocate resources, you are introdu…

> > The goal is to be as unbiased as possible given that limited amount of effort. > So you are therefore biased Yes, but significantly less than before. Which is the goal. > You have a finite set of resources, and you are choosing to allocate them in a particular way. That is bias. That "particular way" is to give more weight to opinions that are under-represented in your training data and give less weight to opinio…

I object specifically to this:

> Saying "there's no way to avoid the bias" is just an excuse to get away with being biased

And specifically to the implied idea that there is an unbiased target that is achievable.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#237

Post by rurp »

prottog wrote: post #209
pixl97 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the 70M(R) want to enact their own set of 'unethical' laws that would greatly affect the (D). Unless you can think of an actual ethical reason that gay marriage should be banned?

> Unless you can think of an actual ethical reason that gay marriage should be banned? Registered republican voters support gay marriage by a significant margin, according to recent polls.

Well sure, but only because it was legalized despite decades of fervent objections from them. After legalization it became undeniable that conservative fearmongering on the issue was total bullshit.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#238

Post by LarryMullins »

yamtaddle wrote: post #224
krapp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, "woke" opinions do reflect those of the general population, which is exactly why conservatives feel they live in some kind of progressive hellscape.

> Actually, "woke" opinions do reflect those of the general population I think a lot probably don't. A whole lot don't if you consider the scope of the entire developed world, not just the US. There's good support (at least in the US) for the liberal position on the last wave of fights over civil rights. Interracial marriage (this was still a tad controversial in the 90s, even, I recall it being a topic on daytime ta…

> No abortion restrictions even into the third trimester? Not favored by the general population

I think this one in particular is more popular in America than in Europe. Third trimester abortions are broadly banned in almost all of Europe, except when a doctor says it's medically necessary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe#Abortion_ru...

Personally I think France gets it about right, but saying this is sure to piss off a lot of people on both sides in America. It pisses off the conservatives because I oppose the total abortion ban they want, and it pisses off progressives because I don't favor legalizing elective third trimester abortions. The American discussion around this issue is extremely polarized.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#239

Post by bitwize »

sputknick wrote: post #6

This is a really important topic, and good that Vice is bringing it up now versus 5-10 years from now. I think they miss the more general point. It's clearly biased in its outputs, but the article dismisses this concern as "the end result of years of researcher trying to mitigate bias against minority groups". The way I interpret that is "its not biased, because its biased in the way we want it to be". If AI becomes…

"Reverse bias" is justified when there are groups that are particularly vulnerable to bias and need particular systemic protection from the same.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#240

Post by permo-w »

krapp wrote: post #188
wizeman wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "current AI systems" that you're talking about were presumably specifically trained by "woke" Silicon Valley employees to reflect their opinions about what the AI should answer [1], which are hardly representative of the general population's opinions. > If conservatives want a fascist chatbot they can train their own off of 8chan, Stormfront, Parlor, etc... I don't think conservatives want a fascist chatbot. Th…

Actually, "woke" opinions do reflect those of the general population, which is exactly why conservatives feel they live in some kind of progressive hellscape.

this is pretty contentious, and based on your definition of "woke", which is a pretty vague word with unhelpful connotations

a less mocking term would be "modern progressivism", which I would summarise as being something like thinking that you can be subconsciously prejudiced against a particular identity and that this is almost or entirely as bad as consciously being so

this conflation is a huge problem. sure, subconscious bias exists. it would be weird if it didn't. and yes it's a problem. but acting like its just as bad as conscious bias basically signals to people who may have a bias here or there might as well be loud and proud about it because you'll treat them the same either way

but in terms of the general population, I think that modern progressives are probably a similar size segment of society as the rabid conservatives, but because that segment contains most of the prominent voices in non-conservative-focused media, a majority of people just nod along or ignore it

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