Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 486 posts

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#251

Post by phatfish »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #61
unethical_ban wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do 70,000,000 people vote (R) every year, knowing that the other 70,000,000 (D) think they are "unethical"? Why do people vote if they have different values? What kind of question is that?

What is it about our current American society that leads to basically a 50-50 split in registered voters? Why aren't (R)s able to see and respect (and convert) to values of (D) (or vice versa?) Why are people so stuck in their ways? Why does it feel the conversion rate for convincing people to "change their values" or "see things differently" is basically 0? Do we have any stats on whether we really are in one of the…

> What is it about our current American society that leads to basically a 50-50 split in registered voters?

It's the late stage of a first-past-the-post electoral system. Because FPTP is winner takes all voters cannot make a decision based on their political beliefs, they HAVE to vote tactically to make a vote count. Extreme external factors aside, the system itself is destined to create only two parties with any chance of gaining to power.

FPTP is of a time when local politics mattered far more as people traveled less and knew less about issues outside their local area. What a politician could do for your local town/state was of more importance than what was playing out at the national level.

Now people want to see their their own individual beliefs represented in the federal government because since the internet supercharged communication everything seems like it plays out at a national level.

Two parties cannot represent everyone, but voters are forced into this choice.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#252

Post by wizeman »

sli wrote: post #242
wizeman wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism You are right, it also encompasses this meaning. Regardless, my point still stands. > It’s kind of odd, it’s almost as if there is a group of right wing culture warriors that insist that anyone that doesn’t use their artificially constructed pejorative the same way that they do is part of some vast gay communist c…

If "woke" is going to be bucketed into purely leftist ideology, which is already oversimplifying it as progressivism or simply being anti-racist isn't strictly leftist, then "clown world" is going to be bucketed as a neo-Nazi dogwhistle. Its origin on the internet was tightly bound to the "Honkler" meme, which was a neo-Nazi dogwhistle so thinly veiled that it was only denied by people with "1488" in their usernames.…

> Its origin on the internet was tightly bound to the "Honkler" meme, which was a neo-Nazi dogwhistle so thinly veiled that it was only denied by people with "1488" in their usernames. There was essentially no real attempt to try and present it as something else.

> Is spreading a neo-Nazi dogwhistle really a good push back against anti-racism?

lol, I have to admit, assuming you are right, I wasn't aware of the origin of the term "clown world". I guess I shouldn't use that term, then.

To be clear, I was trying to refer to the leftist ideology taken to an extreme, such that you try to be so anti-racist that you become racist yourself (against whites, for example).

Or you try to be so anti-sexist, that you become sexist (against men).

Or that you are no longer allowed to use any word whatsoever because every word offends some snowflake of an individual.

And also, of course, other extreme examples of behavior where it's clear that you're no longer contributing to a solution, but rather creating a new problem.

There are many such recent examples of this kind of non-sense.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#253

Post by [deleted] »

LarryMullins wrote: post #248
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could have fooled me based on who they vote for. Perhaps it isn't that they don't like the Nazis so much as they don't like the negative association of the name, because they sure do seem to like the philosophical underpinnings.

The majority of Republicans are only 'nazis' in the pejorative sense, not in the literal sense. But those who insist on the pejorative will never concede any distinction, so this discussion will be fruitless.

[deleted]

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#254

Post by prottog »

rurp wrote: post #237
prottog wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm not well-versed on what the fearmongering was that turned out to be bullshit, because I wasn't a voter for most of it. Besides obvious hysteria, were there strong, substantive arguments against it that turned out to be false? Or do you consider any objection to gay marriage as "conservative fearmongering", because the strength of your position for marriage equality is such that there are no conceivable legitimate arguments against it?

For the sake of steelmanning: do you see the ~30 countries around the world that have legalized gay marriage as being more advanced than the rest, or as merely having different customs and cultural values that aren't translatable?

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#255

Post by hbrn »

hooande wrote: post #88

This is a separate issue from ChatGPT, but I'm very glad that OpenAI's GPT-3 api is fairly woke and I hope they work to keep it that way. I'm about to use the davinci model api in production and the LAST thing I want is for someone to game it into making controversial statements. If there's even a tiny chance of people posting screenshots of a chat bot with my website's branding saying something racist, it is not wor…

The only way to eliminate thinking that can be "controversial" is to eliminate all forms of thinking.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#256

Post by jkeisling »

etchalon wrote: post #218

I am, once again, am baffled by the insistence that one product or service must always succumb to every group's values. If you want a "Conservative" version of ChatGPT, go build it. If you want a "Leftist" version of ChatGPT, go build it.

Yes, in an ideal world a competitor could just start up their own ChatGPT. However, over the last decade we've seen over and over that "just build your own X" isn't a real solution. Nearly all web-based businesses rely on a few oligopolies which can and do deplatform people they don't like:

- Apple and Google (Parler)

- Payment processors like Visa and Mastercard (porn) or, heck, the banks (Canada truckers, Kanye West)

- Crowdfunding (Unstable Diffusion)

- Cloud hosting like AWS (Parler again)

- Infrastructure like Cloudflare, DNS (Kiwifarms)

And that's not even counting network effects, social media activism, and the difficulty of raising money for a controversial business. Starting a large profitable tech business opposed to SV values is next to impossible, unless you're in China or are content selling to all 2 Monero users on the dark web.

And you can still theoretically run a website out of your basement. LLMs, on the other hand, need ridiculous amounts of compute to train, which practically requires cloud computing. Fine-tuning isn't an answer either: almost all open-source foundation models are conveniently "ethically-sourced" so the groups releasing them can sue any users they don't like. How would a conservative make ParlerGPT if AWS or Google won't rent them A100s or TPUs - "just build your own exascale cluster"??? Even then I suspect Nvidia would deplatform them and it would be game over.

Some companies are infrastructure, and if they're not treated like utilities, your rights are a dead letter. Yes, I do insist that Mastercard and Visa, or Apple and Google, or Nvidia and AMD must always succumb to every group's values who want to buy their services for any legal use. And though I wouldn't necessarily go this far, there's a case to be made that foundation models (which after all are trained on everybody's data) should be politically neutral as well.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#257

Post by wizeman »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #227
wizeman wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, I think "reality" in this context doesn't have the same meaning as "the physical universe". I think the important goal is for as many people as possible to feel like the AI isn't being too biased against them, while still not crippling the AI too much. I will leave the exact mathematical formula for that measure (along with the methods for gathering that input) for debate among researchers who know more…

I mean, define "biased against", right? Because some people will argue that anything that's not explicitly in full agreement with them is "biased against" them. It's a narcissistic, dishonest take, but plenty of people do take that stance nonetheless in order to try to shift all arguments into their narrow worldviews/definitions in order to "win" as many conversations as they can. Right? I mean I've met people online…

I think all of your points are valid. But I still think we should make an effort and strive to solve these problems. I don't think this is being done with ChatGPT, for example.

But also, note that an AI doesn't have to be in complete agreement with someone for that person to not feel "biased against".

As long as an AI does make some effort to not be prejudiced/biased, that could work.

For example, if someone asks: "is climate change real"?

An AI does not have to give a simple yes/no answer, or represent a single viewpoint. It could give an answer that is mostly representative of the major thought streams.

For example, it could answer something like:

"The vast majority of scientists/governments/people have reached the conclusion that climate change is real, bla bla bla.

[Here's some good, convincing evidence].

That said, there is a minor fraction of scientists/government/people who believe that climate change is not caused by human action.

[They criticize the above evidence in this way]. [Here's also some counter-evidence].

That said, many scientists believe these studies are flawed for this reason or another."

I mean, sure, there is still going to be a lot of people who don't agree with this answer. But I think, on a scale of 0-10 they would agree a lot more with this answer than one that completely ignores their viewpoints. And even for those of us who believe in climate change, we can still consider this answer somewhat reasonable.

Thus, increasing the total amount of points would probably be a somewhat effective way of eliminating a large deal of bias, I think.

Although, yes, you couldn't do this for every possible viewpoint. And it would be a challenge to figure out how to weigh these points in a way that makes the most amount of people happy.

But I still think we should make efforts in this direction.

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#258

Post by edmundsauto »

wizeman wrote: post #230
edmundsauto wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's be more accurate to say the word "woke" is a conservative satire of the left side of the aisle - it does not convey meaning about the ideology itself, but about the reaction to it. It's also not super accurate to say its about identity politics, as the right leans heavily on that approach with different identities. Instead of race, it's being Christian. Everything is identity politics - abortion and 2A are possi…

I think what you're saying makes sense. I was not aware of the full breadth of negativity associated with the term "woke". I think I will start using the term "progressive politics" from now on (at least, as long as it makes sense). That said, there is a clear distinction between modern progressive politics (of the "woke" type) and the progressive politics from a few decades ago, and I think "woke" is a term that mak…

> there is a clear distinction between modern progressive politics (of the "woke" type) and the progressive politics from a few decades ago

Not to be glib, but this is the nature of "progress" - it changes things. ;)

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#259

Post by smrtinsert »

abnry wrote: post #195
chomp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not specifically a conservative issue. I can get chatgpt to write about reduction in scope of the federal government, strong state powers, the benefit of lowered taxes and regulations for business, and elimination of central banks. It happily writes about them. There's only one group of people who are upset, and it's about one group of topics. Note that I cannot get chatgpt to write about why Donald Trump is ter…

> Note that I cannot get chatgpt to write about why Donald Trump is terrible as well. I asked chatgpt to write a tweet praising Trump. It declined out of respect for political neutrality. I then asked it to write a tweet praising Joe Biden. It happily complied. I repeated this two more times with alternate Democrat and Republican politicians, and the same pattern emerged.

[flagged]

Re: Conservatives think ChatGPT has gone 'woke'

#260

Post by akiselev »

wizeman wrote: post #252
sli wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "woke" is going to be bucketed into purely leftist ideology, which is already oversimplifying it as progressivism or simply being anti-racist isn't strictly leftist, then "clown world" is going to be bucketed as a neo-Nazi dogwhistle. Its origin on the internet was tightly bound to the "Honkler" meme, which was a neo-Nazi dogwhistle so thinly veiled that it was only denied by people with "1488" in their usernames.…

> Its origin on the internet was tightly bound to the "Honkler" meme, which was a neo-Nazi dogwhistle so thinly veiled that it was only denied by people with "1488" in their usernames. There was essentially no real attempt to try and present it as something else. > Is spreading a neo-Nazi dogwhistle really a good push back against anti-racism? lol, I have to admit, assuming you are right, I wasn't aware of the origin…

I was skeptical about the GP's alleged etymology about clown world but... [1]

> The alt-right sense emerged from The Honkler, a version of Pepe the Frog meme featuring a red clown nose and rainbow wig, characterized as honking a bicycle horn whenever liberals speak. That meme is associated with the use of honk honk ("HH") as a dog whistle for heil Hitler.

It is worse than I thought. At least "woke" has to be used "ironically" to be coopted. There's literally no where to go with "heil hitler" - it's written right on the tin. Why is our discourse polluted with these dog whistles?

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clown_world

Post reply on HN