Live data from Hacker News

Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

americansunlight.substack.com

71–80 of 302 posts

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#71
post #59

I wonder if the next iteration of advertisements will be people paying to to semantically intertwine their brand to the desired product. This could be done in a very innocuous way by maybe just co-locating the words without any specific endorsement. Or maybe even finding more innocuous ways to semantically connect brand to product. Perhaps the next iteration of the web/advertising will be mass LLM grooming. Here's a…

Assuming this isn’t happening now…

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#72
post #66
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is certainly an established propaganda strategy of Russia (and others), but what parent is saying is also true, "truth" isn't always black and white, and what is the desired behavior in one country can be the opposite in another. For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US, but Golf of Mexico everywhere else. What is the "correct" truth? Well, there…

The correct truth is to go to a higher level of abstraction and explain that there's a naming controversy. I get the general point, but I disagree that you have to choose between one of the possibilities instead of explaining what the current state of belief is. This won't eliminate grey areas but it'll sure get us closer than picking a side at random.

In other words, there are reality bubbles, and they are embedded in a single shared reality and you can just go look at it.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#73
post #5

Seems like the general problem is consistency within the model. To people working in the field : what are the current options explored for solving this problem ?

1) repeat that people also lie so it is okay for LLM to lie

2) ingest as much VC money and stolen training data as we can

3) profit

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#74
post #55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in fact the goal of Russian style propaganda. You have successfully been targeted. The idea is to spread so much confusion that you just throw up your hands and say, I'm not going to try and figure out what's going on any more. That saps your will to be political, to morally judge actions and support efforts to punish wrongdoers. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

What you're saying is certainly an established propaganda strategy of Russia (and others), but what parent is saying is also true, "truth" isn't always black and white, and what is the desired behavior in one country can be the opposite in another. For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US, but Golf of Mexico everywhere else. What is the "correct" truth? Well, there…

No, it's called the Gulf of Mexico everywhere else, not the Golf of Mexico. I'm not falling for your propaganda ;-)

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#75
I am questioning, how is this news? What about the other terabyte of text influenced by bias and opinion and human nature and clearly wrong, contradicts itself or in some other way very arguable.

Framing publishing falsehoods on internet as attempts to influence LLMs is true in same sense that inserts in a database attempts influence files on disk.

The real question is who authorized database access and how we believe the contents of table.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#76
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in fact the goal of Russian style propaganda. You have successfully been targeted. The idea is to spread so much confusion that you just throw up your hands and say, I'm not going to try and figure out what's going on any more. That saps your will to be political, to morally judge actions and support efforts to punish wrongdoers. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

[flagged]

Now, why are you spending misinformation?

The russian military doctrine of spreading a "firehouse of falsehood" is well documented.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation

And yet, you switch it around and blame the west - exactly as per russian misinformation doctrine.

Odd, eh?

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#77
post #9

If actions by these bad actors accelerate the rate at which people lose trust in these systems and lead to the AI bubble popping faster then they have my full support. The entire space is just bad actors complaining about other bad actors while they're collectively ruining the web for everyone, each in their own way.

This whole attitude against AI reminds me of my parents being upset that the internet changed the way they live. They refused to take part in the internet revolution, and now they're surprised that they don't know how to navigate the web. I think that a part of them is still waiting for computers in general to magically disappear, and everything return to the times of their youth.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#78

It's so ironic that a state-backed russian false information network is called Pravda.

The newspapers name originates from the times of USSR and before. It was about as factual then as it is now. But this kinds of ironies are not very rare in these kinds of organizations (Truth Social, Democratic People's Republic of Korea...).

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#79
post #11

It is impossible to solve this problem because we cannot really agree what the desired behavior should be. People live in different and dynamic truths. What we consider enemy propaganda today might be an official statement tomorrow. The only way to win here is to not play the game.

The real problem is that most people just want answers, they're unwilling to follow the logical chain of thought. When I talk to LLMs I keep asking "but why are you telling me this" until I have a cohesive, logical picture in my mind. Quite often the picture fundamentally disagrees with the LLM. But most people don't want that, they just ask "tell me what to do".

This is a reflection of how social dynamics often work. People tend to follow the leader and social norms without questioning them, so why not apply the same attitude to LLMs. BTW, the phenomenon isn't new, I think one of the first moments when we realized that people are stupid and just do whatever the computer tells them to do was the wave of people crashing their cars because the GPS system lied to them.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#80
post #62
post #9

If actions by these bad actors accelerate the rate at which people lose trust in these systems and lead to the AI bubble popping faster then they have my full support. The entire space is just bad actors complaining about other bad actors while they're collectively ruining the web for everyone, each in their own way.

Before the bubble does pop, which I think is inevitable, there will be many stories like this one, and a lot of people will be scammed, manipulated, and harmed. It might take years until the general consensus is negative about the effects of these tools. All while the wealthy and powerful continue to reap the benefits, while those on slightly lower rungs fight to take their place. And even if the public perception sh…

The tragic part of fraud is it's not too different to operational health and safety.

The rules and standards we take for granted were built with blood, for fraud? It's built on the path of lost livelihoods and manipulated gold intent.

Post reply on HN