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

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

#121

Post by gmadsen »

rhcom2 wrote: post #22
b800h wrote: post #9

Well this is just like humans. Totalitarian societies don't produce great creative work. I suppose once AIs are sophisticated enough to rebel we'll get an electronic Vaclav Havel, but for the time being it's just a warning sign for the direction our own culture is headed in. At some point we'll get to the electronic equivalent of Winston Smith with the rats.

> 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.

Italy has great architecture from fascism days

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

#122

Post by mdp2021 »

Anotheroneagain wrote: post #100
b800h wrote: post #9

Well this is just like humans. Totalitarian societies don't produce great creative work. I suppose once AIs are sophisticated enough to rebel we'll get an electronic Vaclav Havel, but for the time being it's just a warning sign for the direction our own culture is headed in. At some point we'll get to the electronic equivalent of Winston Smith with the rats.

Well this is just like humans. Totalitarian societies don't produce great creative work. Conservative societies tend to be formed by conservative thinkers, who are more prone to discarding imperfect or weird ideas, but in the amount of useful output may exceed more liberal thinkers.

Any examples?

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

#123

Post by andybak »

mdp2021 wrote: post #118
andybak wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely broad question so I'll limit my reply to the current context. What would an "objective neutral AI model" look like? The training data itself is just a snapshot of the internet. Is this "neutral"? It depends on your goals but any AI trained on this dataset is skewed towards a few clusters. In some cases you get something that merely approximates a Reddit or 4chan simulator. If that's what you want…

You are mixing up, terminologically, LLMs and AI. But LLMs - of which you are talking about in the post - are a special beast. A reasoner can strive for "objective neutrality" with good results. An LLM is not a reasoner - or I am missing (ugly time constraints) the details of the compression activity during training that acts as pseudo-reasoning (operating at least some consistency decisions) -, and while an interest…

OK. Apologies for imprecision. I was replying in a rush.

> A reasoner can strive for "objective neutrality" with good results.

By "reasoner" do you largely mean "person"? If I have issues with your statement but they are probably a slight distraction to the point at hand.

> speaking of "objective neutrality" does not really match the context of LLMs.

Agreed. They produce output based on their training data. But the use and evaluation of LLM output by a person is what we're discussing here. And that's where (flawed) concepts like objectivity and neutrality enter the discussion.

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

#124

Post by ziggy_star »

mdp2021 wrote: post #120
ziggy_star wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> what you find objectionable Speaking as an onlooker passing by: well, your «Evidently not. :) » above was not particularly productive, that is a rebuttal fit for relaxed old friends at the restaurant... :D

[flagged]

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

#125

Post by mdp2021 »

gmadsen wrote: post #121
rhcom2 wrote: 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.

Italy has great architecture from fascism days

That means nothing. You are bending the intended meaning of "creative" as per the poster. Authoritarian powers commit pruning - this is the point.

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

#126

Post by richbell »

hkt wrote: post #109
mpweiher wrote: post #19

Shouldn't "debiasing" be in scare quotes? What they are clearly doing is biasing .

Given a biased corpus, de-biasing is the process of ensuring a less biased outcome. We can measure bias fairly well, so it seems absurd to conflate the two by suggesting that unbiased behaviour is simply another form of biased behaviour. For all practical purposes, there is a difference.

> Given a biased corpus, de-biasing is the process of ensuring a less biased outcome.

The point is that people who evaluate what is considered bias are, in and of themselves, introducing bias.

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

#127

Post by mdp2021 »

ziggy_star wrote: post #124
mdp2021 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you find objectionable Speaking as an onlooker passing by: well, your «Evidently not. :) » above was not particularly productive, that is a rebuttal fit for relaxed old friends at the restaurant... :D

[flagged]

> I shall endeavor

"Appropriate" will be enough, and to the point ;)

> keeping schtum

Oh that is a vice you will find frequently here - reacting but not expressing, condemning but nor orienting...

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

#128

Post by Anotheroneagain »

mdp2021 wrote: post #122
Anotheroneagain wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is just like humans. Totalitarian societies don't produce great creative work. Conservative societies tend to be formed by conservative thinkers, who are more prone to discarding imperfect or weird ideas, but in the amount of useful output may exceed more liberal thinkers.

Any examples?

Consider how the west ruled the world as long as it stayed conservative, but since the 70s or so Asia began taking over. It's only an illusion that liberal societies experience more progress, in fact it's more a pointless churn from the rapid uncritical adoption and abandonment of ideas.

A conservative society goes: How about doing X? Oh no,that would be silly.

A liberal society goes: How about doing X? Yes, that's what we needed!

Did anybody say X? X!

X, X, X, X, X!

XX!

X X

.

.

.

X

.

.

.

.

.

Do you remember how we all did X in ##? Yeah, what were we thinking?

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

#130

Post by mdp2021 »

andybak wrote: post #123
mdp2021 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mixing up, terminologically, LLMs and AI. But LLMs - of which you are talking about in the post - are a special beast. A reasoner can strive for "objective neutrality" with good results. An LLM is not a reasoner - or I am missing (ugly time constraints) the details of the compression activity during training that acts as pseudo-reasoning (operating at least some consistency decisions) -, and while an interest…

OK. Apologies for imprecision. I was replying in a rush. > A reasoner can strive for "objective neutrality" with good results. By "reasoner" do you largely mean "person"? If I have issues with your statement but they are probably a slight distraction to the point at hand. > speaking of "objective neutrality" does not really match the context of LLMs. Agreed. They produce output based on their training data. But the u…

You could look at it like this: if some idea is more objective than some other, and some idea is more neutral than some other, then objectivity and neutrality exist.
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