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Machine Unlearning in 2024

ai.stanford.edu

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Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#51

Post by AvAn12 »

negative_person wrote: post #11
williamtrask wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we can get AI related technologies to do things living creatures can’t, like provably forget things. And when it benefits us, we should. Personal opinion, but I think AGI is a good heuristic to build against but in the end we’ll pivot away. Sort of like how birds were a good heuristic for human flight, but modern planes don’t flap their wings and greatly exceed bird capabilities in many ways. Attribution for…

Can you point to any behaviour in human beings you'd unlearn if theyd also forget the consequences? We spend billions trying to predict human behaviour and yet we are surprised everyday, "AGI" will be no simpler. We just have to hope the dataset was aligned so the consequences are understood, and find a way to contain models that don't.

A few things to exclude from training might include: - articles with mistakes such as incorrect product names, facts, dates, references - fraudulent and non-repeatable research findings - see John Ioannidis among others - outdated and incorrect scientific concepts like phlogiston and LaMarckian evolution - junk content such as 4-chan comments section content - flat earther "science" and other such nonsense - debatable stuff like: do we want material that attributes human behavior to astrological signs or not? And when should a response make reference to such? - prank stuff like script kiddies prompting 2+2=5 until an AI system "remembers" this - intentional poisoning of a training set with disinformation - suicidal and homicidal suggestions and ideation - etc.

Even if we go with the notion that AGI is coming, there is no reason its training should include the worst in us.

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#52

Post by Vampiero »

isodev wrote: post #41
avi_vallarapu wrote: post #38

We need to consider the practicality of unlearning methods in real-world applications and the legal acceptance of the same. Given current technology and what advancements are needed to make Unlearning more possible, probably there should be a time-to-unlearn kind of an acceptable agreement that allows organizations to retrain or tune the response that does not involve any response from the to-be-unlearned copyright c…

> a time-to-unlearn kind of an acceptable agreement Why put the burden to end users? I think the technology should allow for unlearning and even "never learn about me in any future models and derivative models".

The technology is on par with a Markov chain that's grown a little too much. It has no notion of "you", not in the conventional sense at least. Putting the infrastructure in place to allow people (and things) to be blacklisted from training is all you can really do, and even then it's a massive effort. The current models are not trained in such a way that you can do this without starting over from scratch.

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#53

Post by wruza »

negative_person wrote: post #4

Why should we try to unlearn "bad" behaviours from AI? There is no AGI without violence, its part of being free thinking and self survival. But also by knowing that launching a first strike by a drunk president was a bad idea we averted a war because of a few people, AI needs to understand consequences. It seems futile to try and hide "bad" from AI.

There is no AGI without violence, its part of being free thinking and self survival.

Self survival idea is a part of natural selection, AGI doesn't have to have it. Maybe the problem is we are the only template to build AGI from, but that's not inherent to "I" in any way. Otoh, lack of self preservation can make animals even more ferocious. Also there's a reason they often leave a retreat path in warzones.

Long story short it's not that straightforward, so I sort of agree cause it's an uncharted defaults-lacking territory we'll have to explore. "Unlearn bad" is as naive as not telling your kids about sex and drugs.

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#55

Post by cwillu »

ben_w wrote: post #19
cwillu wrote: post #7

“to edit away undesired things like private data, stale knowledge, copyrighted materials, toxic/unsafe content, dangerous capabilities, and misinformation, without retraining models from scratch” To say nothing of unlearning those safeguards and/or “safeguards”.

It sounds like you're mistakenly grouping together three very different methods of changing an AI's behaviour. You have some model, M™, which can do Stuff. Some of the Stuff is, by your personal standards Bad (I don't care what your standard is, roll with this). You have three solutions: 1) Bolt on a post-processor which takes the output of M™, and if the output is detectably Bad, you censor it. Failure mode: this is…

I think you mistakenly replied to my comment instead of one that made some sort of grouping?

Alternatively, you're assuming that because there is some possible technique that can't be reversed, it's no longer useful to remove the effects of techniques that _can_ be reversed?

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#56

Post by danielmarkbruce »

greenavocado wrote: post #54

Please use the correct terminology: censorship

If company X wants their model to say/not say Y based on ideology, they aren't stopping anyone saying anything. They are stopping their own model saying something. The fact that I don't go around screaming nasty things about some group doesn't make me against free speech.

It's censorship to try to stop people producing models as they see fit.

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#57

Post by surfingdino »

negative_person wrote: post #4

Why should we try to unlearn "bad" behaviours from AI? There is no AGI without violence, its part of being free thinking and self survival. But also by knowing that launching a first strike by a drunk president was a bad idea we averted a war because of a few people, AI needs to understand consequences. It seems futile to try and hide "bad" from AI.

AI has no concept of children, family, or nation. It doesn't have parental love or offspring protection instinct. Faced with danger to its children it cannot choose between fighting or sacrificing itself in order to protect others. What it is good at is capturing value through destruction of value generated by existing business models; it does it by perpetrating mass theft of other people's IP.

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#58

Post by cscurmudgeon »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #46
visarga wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one cares how much it might cost you to retrain your models. Playing tough? But it's misguided. "No one cares how much it might cost you to fix the damn internet" If you wanted to retro-fix facts, even if that could be achieved on a trained model, it would still get back by way of RAG or web search. But we don't ask pure LLMs for facts and news unless we are stupid. If someone wanted to pirate a content it would…

What do you mean playing tough? These are existing laws that should be enforced. The amount of people's lives ruined by the American government because they were deemed copyright infringers is insane. The us has made it clear that copyright infringement is unacceptable. We now have a new class of criminals infringing on copyright on a grand scale via their models and they seem desperate to avoid persecution hence all…

1. You are assuming just training a model on copyrighted material is a violation. It is not. It may be under certain conditions but not by default.

2. Why should we aim for harsh punitive punishments just because it was done so in the past?

Re: Machine Unlearning in 2024

#60

Post by beeboobaa3 »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #58
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean playing tough? These are existing laws that should be enforced. The amount of people's lives ruined by the American government because they were deemed copyright infringers is insane. The us has made it clear that copyright infringement is unacceptable. We now have a new class of criminals infringing on copyright on a grand scale via their models and they seem desperate to avoid persecution hence all…

1. You are assuming just training a model on copyrighted material is a violation. It is not. It may be under certain conditions but not by default. 2. Why should we aim for harsh punitive punishments just because it was done so in the past?

> 1. You are assuming just training a model on copyrighted material is a violation. It is not. It may be under certain conditions but not by default.

Using copyrighted content for commercial purposes should be a violation if it's not already considered to be one. No different from playing copyrighted songs in your restaurant without paying a licensing fee.

> 2. Why should we aim for harsh punitive punishments just because it was done so in the past?

I'd be fine with abolishing, or overhauling, the copyright system. This rules with harsh penalties for consumers/small companies but not for bigtech double standard is bullshit, though.

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