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MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

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Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#31

Post by slotrans »

gAI wrote: post #27
feoren wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The submitter knows the AI isn’t lying You've somehow internalized something as "obvious to everyone" that's actually very wrong and dangerous about AI. Of course the AI is lying. Or, perhaps a better term would be "bullshitting", defined as "sounding convincing while having no regard for the truth". By that definition, bullshitting is all LLMs ever do .

That's an ungenerous way of describing direct access to semantic space. gAI is creative. Rules-based AI is logical. We need them both.

It may be "ungenerous" but it's accurate. Unlike the output of LLMs.

Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#34

Post by brudgers »

LLM’s solve all the problems with expert systems (remember those?) by removing expertise.

This is not a criticism.

General intelligence is not represented by the graybeard in the corner office. At best it’s a knucklehead in the next cubicle.

Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#35

Post by ImaCake »

gAI wrote: post #27
feoren wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The submitter knows the AI isn’t lying You've somehow internalized something as "obvious to everyone" that's actually very wrong and dangerous about AI. Of course the AI is lying. Or, perhaps a better term would be "bullshitting", defined as "sounding convincing while having no regard for the truth". By that definition, bullshitting is all LLMs ever do .

That's an ungenerous way of describing direct access to semantic space. gAI is creative. Rules-based AI is logical. We need them both.

This is a good point. The problem is that most people simply don’t care about these nuances. If the AI hallucinates or is wrong, then in their eyes it is lying.

It doesn’t matter if that opinion is wrong because its still the opinion that matters.

Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#37

Post by mrpotato »

sergiomattei wrote: post #6

This is a heavily editorialized title. It’s just a feature that explains a web platform doc using LLMs. They can be inaccurate sometimes, but as long as that’s clear to the end user (in this case, developers) I don’t think that’s a problem. Heck, many of us do this day-to-day with ChatGPT. In this case, the sin was not making the potential for inaccuracies clear enough.

> In this case, the sin was not making the potential for inaccuracies clear enough.

I completely agree and the tone of some of the comments in the issue are disproportionate to the problem.

Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#38

Post by contravariant »

thorum wrote: post #25

I actually think this feature would be fine if implemented better. GPT-4 is perfectly capable of accurately explaining what a short code block does if you prompt it with relevant documentation… which MDN has in abundance, but isn’t using, for some reason. The mistakes seem to be (1) using GPT 3.5 instead because it’s cost effective, even though GPT 3.5 has severe issues with hallucination, and (2) not including conte…

> Also, since I assume MDN has a finite number of things that need explaining, why not let users mark an AI explanation as wrong, and submit their own corrected versions?

I mean if you implement it well you don't really need the model. If anything it would be more effective if it was always just slightly wrong.

Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#39

Post by kristopolous »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #10
readyplayernull wrote: post #8

Now if only an AI could explain to me those intractable terms and contracts of BigCo's. /s

https://tosdr.org has existed for years before the current LLM wave

that's pretty nice although I really don't like how it puts a value judgement on everything. Characterizing things in a way that's not just "good(-er) and bad(-er)" would be nice.

For instance, on the "pornhub" one they put in red that the service can monitor your "private" messages. I can reverse the value of that: with the problems of sex trafficking, underage exploitation and other types of crime that could happen there, we should be happy the company is dedicated to doing that. All of those red items in fact look like things I've got no problem with there.

Re: MDN can now automatically lie to people seeking technical information

#40

Post by adunsulag »

geraldwhen wrote: post #7

Imagine putting an LLM anywhere health, safety, or regulation are involved. It would be engineering malpractice.

Seeing a lot of it going on in healthcare right now, especially healthcare startups. Wonder how soon regulators will step in and start stomping down on it... it usually takes several years to a decade for any federal rule to be issued so startups may make it through long enough to turn the bag over to someone else.
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