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How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

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Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and is easily convinced to give responses to questions its authors tried to prevent it from addressing. I agree with your statement, yet I fail to understand how this is different from the majority of the Internet already.

> fail to understand how this is different from the majority of the Internet already This is probably a joke. But the difference is eloquence and subtlety. ChatGPT is both. Most trolls and chronically misinformeds are not.

YMMV, but I spot a lot of eloquent BS on HackerNews. And there's definitely no shortage of posts with a political agenda.

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#23
We’ve already been having the AI intentionally or unintentionally being changed by the large organizations.

Just as a simple example, you can’t publish white supremest content. If it gets close, but doesn’t cross the line, it’s deranked. Mention the “correct” thing: “Black men deserve restitution, white men are too inherently privileged” And it’ll rank high. Mention the wrong thing on YouTube (“climate change isn’t a problem”) and you could get a strike or banned. Only one view is constantly presented and tugged.

It’s already been a decade of this. The climate change & vaccine debate is the most obvious — it’s also political. It’s how we collaborate and work together.

By deranking opposing views, there’s only one public view. That’s why there are multiple “bubbles” depending on which platform(s) and what content you’ve liked.

I personally don’t care about the AIs opinion, I care about the humans who are voting, working, taxing, etc.

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#24
post #4

You know, there are a bunch of things that come across this website that concern me, but I can honestly say I've not seen anything that's pegged my "doomsday" alert as aggressively and unexpectedly as the ChatGPT bots. You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and i…

> You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and is easily convinced to give responses to questions its authors tried to prevent it from addressing. I agree with your statement, yet I fail to understand how this is different from the majority of the Internet already.

Scale. It takes much more time, effort, inclination, knowledge, etc. for a human to bullshit as effectively as 30 seconds of ChatGPT.

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#25
post #4

You know, there are a bunch of things that come across this website that concern me, but I can honestly say I've not seen anything that's pegged my "doomsday" alert as aggressively and unexpectedly as the ChatGPT bots. You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and i…

> You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and is easily convinced to give responses to questions its authors tried to prevent it from addressing. I agree with your statement, yet I fail to understand how this is different from the majority of the Internet already.

The end state of these models is to probably poison the public internet completely as a source of reliable knowledge. Things that don't have citation chains that go back to human-created offline content won't be trustworthy - is that a real newspaper article linked from that Wikipedia article, or a fake one for a fake paper generated from thin air? You were looking at Reddit because you think you're more likely to get a real testimonial vs SEO spam? Whoops, there goes that too. Etc.

This sounds bad, but I agree that it's only the acceleration of an existing trend.

The only bright side is that it's really only rolling back a couple of decades of status quo. It's not like humanity has never operated without Wikipedia or instant search for news articles (specifically scoping it down there from "google" in general since a lot of what a plain web search on many topics will turn up is already unreliable).

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and is easily convinced to give responses to questions its authors tried to prevent it from addressing. I agree with your statement, yet I fail to understand how this is different from the majority of the Internet already.

The end state of these models is to probably poison the public internet completely as a source of reliable knowledge. Things that don't have citation chains that go back to human-created offline content won't be trustworthy - is that a real newspaper article linked from that Wikipedia article, or a fake one for a fake paper generated from thin air? You were looking at Reddit because you think you're more likely to ge…

"The end state of these models is to probably poison the public internet completely"

Based on what?

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end state of these models is to probably poison the public internet completely as a source of reliable knowledge. Things that don't have citation chains that go back to human-created offline content won't be trustworthy - is that a real newspaper article linked from that Wikipedia article, or a fake one for a fake paper generated from thin air? You were looking at Reddit because you think you're more likely to ge…

"The end state of these models is to probably poison the public internet completely" Based on what?

Start with the damage done by cheaply-paid lightly-researched copypasta SEO spam junk pages to the trustworthiness of info returned by the typical Google search result. There are no shortage of people out there - or on HN - who know better than to trust most random webpages.

Now automate that to 10x, 100x, 1000x the volume.

Then throw in fake images and video too.

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#28
post #4

You know, there are a bunch of things that come across this website that concern me, but I can honestly say I've not seen anything that's pegged my "doomsday" alert as aggressively and unexpectedly as the ChatGPT bots. You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and i…

I think your problem with these models may be that ChatGPT has effectively reached the equivalent of the "uncanny valley" for language. It is not real, but it is also too close to the real thing to recognise that fact immediately. It could be real, but not quite.

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#29
post #4

You know, there are a bunch of things that come across this website that concern me, but I can honestly say I've not seen anything that's pegged my "doomsday" alert as aggressively and unexpectedly as the ChatGPT bots. You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and i…

ChatGPT wasn’t advertised as being an oracle, it was advertised as conversational People realized it could hold a conversation on everything (a decreasing subset of everything) Its training set is full of conversations where humans confidently lie or are wrong and defend their position

I think it's more that it fills in gaps without regard to meaning. If it can't find an argument/explanation/etc. that contains the nouns and verbs (i.e. the substance) of what it's being prompted with, it will happily manufacture that content out of completely unrelated sentences that are similar in structure.

It isn't that it's imitating liars any more than Stable Diffusion is imitating photographs of people with faces growing out of their crotches or eight arms. Very convincingly 3D horrific imagery in Stable Diffusion is the equivalent of confident lying in ChatGPT.

Re: How do AIs' political opinions change as they get smarter and better-trained?

#30
post #4

You know, there are a bunch of things that come across this website that concern me, but I can honestly say I've not seen anything that's pegged my "doomsday" alert as aggressively and unexpectedly as the ChatGPT bots. You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and i…

> You have an advanced computer system that seems almost oracular in its knowledge and abilities, except it lies confidently about things it doesn't know, is primed to say what people want to hear, and is easily convinced to give responses to questions its authors tried to prevent it from addressing. I agree with your statement, yet I fail to understand how this is different from the majority of the Internet already.

Setting aside intentional liars, there is a chance that you can demonstrate to someone why they are misinformed.

If someone was as consistently wrong as chatgtp is, you quickly learn to ignore them and move on with your life.

We haven't yet moved on from the novelty of a machine which bullshits with the confidence of a professional hustler. Like a codependent partner, we think we can fix them if only we stay with it (based on how many people celebrate it as the thing that will kill Google search, school essays, etc).

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