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Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

americansunlight.substack.com

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Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#111

Post by andrepd »

suspended_state wrote: post #105
grishka wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet actually enabled us to do new things. AI is nothing of that sort. It just generates mediocre statistically-plausible text.

In the early days of the web, there wasn't much we could do with it other than making silly pages with blinking texts or under construction animated GIFs. You need to give it some time before judging a new technology.

The internet predates the Web; people were playing Muds and chatting on message boards before the first browser was made at CERN.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#112

Post by autoexec »

saubeidl wrote: post #69
strken wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about straight up ideological disagreements? Are markets a driver of wealth and innovation or of exploitation and misery? Is abortion an important human right or murder? Etc etc

I don't see those examples as being either-or. They don't seem like questions about any kind of objective truth, just questions about what aspect of a thing you think is the most important to you.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#114

Post by andrepd »

mentalgear wrote: post #41

"Ultimately, the only way forward is better cognition, including systems that can evaluate news sources, understand satire, and so forth. But that will require deeper forms of reasoning, better integrated into the process, and systems sharp enough to fact check to their own outputs. All of which may require a fundamental rethink. In the meantime, systems of naive mimicry and regurgitation, such as the AIs we have now…

Exactly. People say "we have invented X (the LLMs), now if we just invent Y (reasoning AGI) all of X's problems will be solved". Problem is, there's no indication Y is close or even remotely related to X!

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#115

Post by numpad0 »

charcircuit wrote: post #16
matusp wrote: 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.

There are personalized social media feeds, so why not have personalized LLMs that align with how people want their LLM to act.

Cost. It takes a lot of computational cost to train or retrain LLM, currently.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#116

Post by autoexec »

charcircuit wrote: post #16
matusp wrote: 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.

There are personalized social media feeds, so why not have personalized LLMs that align with how people want their LLM to act.

In a hypothetical world where people have, train and control their own LLMs according to their own needs it might be nice, but I fear that since the most common and advanced LLMs are controlled by a small number of people they won't be willing to give that much power to individuals because it will endanger their ability to manipulate those LLMs in order to push their own agendas and increase their own profits.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#117

Post by suspended_state »

andrepd wrote: post #111
suspended_state wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early days of the web, there wasn't much we could do with it other than making silly pages with blinking texts or under construction animated GIFs. You need to give it some time before judging a new technology.

The internet predates the Web; people were playing Muds and chatting on message boards before the first browser was made at CERN.

Of course, but does it mean that my argument is flawed? You're just shifting the discourse, without disproving anything. Do you claim that the web was useful for everyone on day one, or as useful as it is today for everyone?

I could just do the same as GP, and qualify MUDs and BBS as poor proxies for social interactions that are much more elaborate and vibrant in person.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#118

Post by autoexec »

nailer wrote: post #23
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we consider enemy propaganda today might be an official statement tomorrow. Remember when worrying about COVID was sinophobia? Or when the lab leak was a far-right conspiracy theory? When masks were deemed unnecessary except for healthcare professionals, but then mandated for everyone?

People seem to be voting this down as it seems like political advocacy, but the point seems to be that the commonly accepted truth does indeed change.

> the point seems to be that the commonly accepted truth does indeed change.

As it should when new evidence comes to light to justify it. Ideally, the tools we use would keep up along with those changes while transparently preserving the history and causes of them.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#119

Post by azan_ »

dns_snek wrote: 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.

> at which people lose trust in these systems

Most of people do not lose trust in system as long as it confirms their biases (which they could've created in the first place).

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#120

Post by 3cats-in-a-coat »

dns_snek wrote: 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.

AIs can be trained to rely more on critical thinking rather than just regurgitating what it reads. The problem is just like with people, critical thinking takes more power and time. So we avoid it as much as possible.

In fact, optimizing for the wrong things like that, is basically the entire world's problem right now.

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