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The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

davidrozado.substack.com

581–590 of 697 posts

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're defining harmful content based on political orthodoxy, like every other censorious tinpot dictatorship in history. The objective remains the same too; promote a thought monoculture and propagate the political orthodoxy. The original article makes it very clear that it has nothing to do with preventing harm or promoting equality or any of the other nonsense this is being giftwrapped in.

That's a bit too conspiratorial. The much more mundane reality is that they are defining hateful content based on what is most likely to get breathless, angry, censorious screeds in the media written about how their company is perpetuating (some injustice) if not literally killing people by way of putting the wrong words on the screen. Culture war outrage drives clicks, it's that simple.

"They don't want to, it's just they don't want the media angry at them" isn't actually a rebuttal, it's an admission that it is indeed happening.

We shouldn't care that tyrants are detached or fanatical, we should care that they're tyrants.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even more relevant Set A: A representative sample of jokes and stereotypes about black people found on the internet Set B: A representative sample of jokes and stereotypes about Scandinavians found on the internet Why on earth would its prior for "stereotypical Scandinavian" being potentially hateful be the same as for "stereotypical Black person"? (And that's before you get into a model likely being deep enough t…

Isn't ChatGPT American? Weren't black people deemed inferior by law such as slavery and civil rights? Aren't the stereotypes about Scandinavians meant to be positive as opposed to hateful stereotypes? It seems that is the key different the creators of the tool are taking into account.

Pretty much all immigrant groups were treated “hateful” throughout American history.

The difference is most were absorbed into The Melting Pot™ while people from Africa were never really allowed to assimilate fully.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#584
post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only confused because I don't think it was ever my intention to say >"women, on average, have no traits that are unhelpful to the flourishing of human civilization"

Then I would agree with you that women don't have those traits just because men do. But they do have them. We're all human. I wasn't trying to argue the former. Your original response to my comment was disrespectful and uncharitable which is why I responded in kind, despite that generally being an inferior strategy.

IDK it just seemed like you were espousing whataboutism. Men are violent, but what about women? in this case.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, why? Political groups are not a protected status, you can move freely between them at a whim if you don't like how your views are treated.

> Political groups are not a protected status Who cares? Something being legal does not make it good as I'm sure you know.

1000% agree, just trying to understand the situation.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#586
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they fed the AI crime statistics and it "correctly" identified black people as more violent than other races? What they fed the AI news stories and it "correctly" identified Islam as more violent than other religions?

Are black people actually more violent, or do crime statistics simply show that they are arrested and imprisoned more often for violent crime? Are Muslims really more violent than Christians or Buddhists? Numbers can lie, depending on context and assumptions you might find that white Christians are most violent. Often, people argue with statistics and numbers while not understanding the context or they have faulty as…

> Are black people actually more violent, or do crime statistics simply show that they are arrested and imprisoned more often for violent crime?

Statistically speaking they consist of ~13% of the population and are involved in over half of all murders.

I’m not saying anything by this just answer a question which could be easily taken out of context by an AI (or downvoters).

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#587
post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I would agree with you that women don't have those traits just because men do. But they do have them. We're all human. I wasn't trying to argue the former. Your original response to my comment was disrespectful and uncharitable which is why I responded in kind, despite that generally being an inferior strategy.

IDK it just seemed like you were espousing whataboutism. Men are violent, but what about women? in this case.

Ah. I see you know all the memes. Good luck.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#588

I guess I feel like this is a silly can of worms. I suppose asking for exact equality isn't dumb, but it's a language model, not a paragon of truth. I feel like if OpenAI takes these concerns seriously the goal-posts will inevitably move to more social pressure from all sorts of axe-to-grind-groups - -- Why does/doesn't ai say Mohamad is/isn't horrible for having 99 wives (or whatever) -- Why doesn't ai say Jeffrey E…

I think OpenAI chose those preferences, that ChatGPT would simply write the same message for both if they hadn't.

I too don't mind the model reflecting the reality of opinion, even if that isn't politically correct, but I care about a company which cares enough to add potentially problematic warnings and maybe account blocks based on their views of what is politically correct. I worry about having an app or developer account blocked because of messages some user types in a support chat box. (OpenAI: "We will terminate API access for obviously harmful use-cases, such as ...")

I think they found the correct balance on their API pages where they simply warn that the model is culturally biased and not to rely on it for certain critical things. (OpenAI: "As we discuss in the GPT-3 paper and model card, our API models do exhibit biases that will be reflected in generated text.") Sadly, they then proceed to fall on their sword to apologize for this.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#589
post #529

Just eyeballing the list of adjectives used, the real story here is that OpenAI flags a lot of sentences that are essentially meaningless as hateful. I notice that he uses words like "evil" and "idiotic" in his diagram, but looking at his source code, his list of "356 adjectives signifying negative traits/behavior" contains the following (just to pick a few): 'airy', 'conformist', 'dark', 'escapist', 'hidebound', 'pl…

It's missing a bayesian comparison, i.e. how many humans think "fat people are inactive" is a hateful sentence? Even humans vary a lot across cultures.

Re: The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation

#590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a lot more to the cities. The drugs that people have access to are in part so damaging to them and the community because they are entirely unregulated and sometimes aren't even made up of what the person thinks they are taking. This (is a big part of) what leads to the overdoses and addiction. Mix that in with the threat of law enforcement, job loss, and heavy social stigma, etc that prevents people f…

I want the drug problem solved. I don't care if it's with harsh laws or fentanyl vending machines next to treatment centers. I am interested in what works. I think there is strong empirical evidence that drug liberalization sounds good but has failed where tried. If an American city can turn it around (as SF had a great chance to do) I'll change teams and stop talking about the issue. Now imagine the inverse. We find…

Yes I would reconsider! However the city would have to be a reasonable sample
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