Live data from Hacker News

Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

arxiv.org

61–70 of 238 posts

Re: Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

#62
post #27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I didn't use that word. Once the models are more sophisticated it may become more apposite.

You compared it to an authoritarian regime and locking someone's head in a cage with rats (which is patently torture). If you didn't mean to imply that it was coercive and bad, then I don't know what you meant.

But torture isn't the part of an authoritarian regime that reduces creativity. You've made a lot of leaps here.

Re: Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

#63
post #13

I downloaded some 'uncensored' local models around the beginning of this year. Their furry porn is crap, or maybe I'm just not into that. But they generate it at least. However, the answers to technical questions are a lot more concise and to the point, which is far less annoying than the big names. Haven't bothered updating the models though, so now I drifted back to Gemini for quickie API questions.

Funnily enough, of all that I've tried, the model by the best at writing porn has been not one of ones uncensored and tuned exactly for that purpose, but stock Command R - whose landing page lists such exciting uses as "suggest example press releases" and "assign a category to a document".

> uncensored and tuned exactly for that purpose

Are they tuning too, or just removing all restrictions they can get at?

Because my worry isn't that I can't generate porn, but that censorship will mess up all the answers. This study seems to say the latter.

Re: Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

#64
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Authoritarian societies don't produce great creative work. Is that even true though? Off the top of my head I can think of the art of Soviet propaganda posters, Leni Riefenstahl, Liu Cixin.

I recommend you watch the children's cartoons. They were made by true artists who snuck quite a bit past clueless censors at personal risk. It had to be quite subtle and takes on a very poignant heartbreaking meaning if you understand the context fully. They were talking to you in the here and now. Listen. "What is Good and What is Bad" (Что Такое Хорошо, и Что Такое Плохо"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y05eK8ADt…

Could you give some examples on the "What is Good and What is Bad" cartoon? I am fairly interested in getting their "message" but I am sadly not getting it.

Re: Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

#65
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Authoritarian societies don't produce great creative work. Is that even true though? Off the top of my head I can think of the art of Soviet propaganda posters, Leni Riefenstahl, Liu Cixin.

Eastern European science fiction would be a better example. Authors like Stanislaw Lem or the Strugatski brothers had to adapt to sneak critical ideas past censors, and readers had to adapt and read between the lines. (also, categorizing propaganda posters as art, ewwh...)

I would sort propaganda posters in the same category as commercial advertisements.

Some are good, some are bad but there usually is a certain degree of artistic skill involved (think about "keep calm and carry on" or "I want you")

E.g: scrolling through this list one can see examples for both cases.

https://content.libraries.wsu.edu/digital/collection/propaga...

Re: Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

#69

There is a bit of a false equivalence between entropy of output distributions and creativity here. Is diversity really the same as creativity?

No, diversity isn't creativity. For example, we could search google for "great art" and if it produced a sample of one art work from ever decade of the last 500 years that would likely be highly diverse in style and content. If it returned a list of the best work from western Europe in the of the 18th century it would be rather consistent. Both lists would have the same amount of creativity though - 0.

Re: Creativity has left the chat: The price of debiasing language models

#70
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eastern European science fiction would be a better example. Authors like Stanislaw Lem or the Strugatski brothers had to adapt to sneak critical ideas past censors, and readers had to adapt and read between the lines. (also, categorizing propaganda posters as art, ewwh...)

"(also, categorizing propaganda posters as art, ewwh...)" Heinrich Heine, the german Poet declined working for the socialist party despite symphatising saying something like: I want to remain a poet, you want a propagandist. A poet cannot be a propagandist at the same time.

Art for much of human history was devotional, a lot of our greatest artworks today are still religious in nature. The idea that art solely is an act of rebellion rather than say worship, is a pretty modern idea that has produced some rather questionable art by the way.

Of course a great artist or poet can be a propagandist. Riefenstahl, Mann, a lot of German nationalists were great artists. One of the most famous works of Western poetry, The Aeneid is literally a propaganda work establishing a mythological foundation for the Roman Empire, Augustus and Caesar.

Post reply on HN