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History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

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Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#271

Post by nottorp »

ghaff wrote: post #269
nottorp wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Jules verne predicted rockets. I still move that it's quantitative predictions not qualitative. I mean, all Kindle does for me is save me space. I don't have to store all those books now. Who predicted the humble internet forum though? Or usenet before it?

Kindles are just books and books are already mostly fairly compact and inexpensive long-form entertainment and information. They're convenient but if they went away tomorrow, my life wouldn't really change in any material way. That's not really the case with smartphones much less the internet more broadly.

That was exactly my point.

Funny, I had "The collected stories of Frank Herbert" as my next read on my tablet. Here's a juicy quote from like the third screen of the first story:

"The bedside newstape offered a long selection of stories [...]. He punched code letters for eight items, flipped the machine to audio and listened to the news while dressing."

Anything qualitative there? Or all of it quantitative?

Story is "Operation Syndrome", first published in 1954.

Hey, where are our glowglobes and chairdogs btw?

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#272

Post by patapong »

p-e-w wrote: post #207
bondarchuk wrote: post #204

> Historical texts contain racism, antisemitism, misogyny, imperialist views. The models will reproduce these views because they're in the training data. This isn't a flaw, but a crucial feature—understanding how such views were articulated and normalized is crucial to understanding how they took hold. Yes! > We're developing a responsible access framework that makes models available to researchers for scholarly purp…

It’s as if every researcher in this field is getting high on the small amount of power they have from denying others access to their results. I’ve never been as unimpressed by scientists as I have been in the past five years or so. “We’ve created something so dangerous that we couldn’t possibly live with the moral burden of knowing that the wrong people (which are never us, of course) might get their hands on it, so…

I think it's more likely they are terrified of someone making a prompt that gets the model to say something racist or problematic (which shouldn't be too hard), and the backlash they could receive as a result of that.

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#273

Post by DGoettlich »

seizethecheese wrote: post #119

> Imagine you could interview thousands of educated individuals from 1913—readers of newspapers, novels, and political treatises—about their views on peace, progress, gender roles, or empire. Not just survey them with preset questions, but engage in open-ended dialogue, probe their assumptions, and explore the boundaries of thought in that moment. Hell yeah, sold, let’s go… > We're developing a responsible access fra…

understand your frustration. i trust you also understand the models have some dark corners that someone could use to misrepresent the goals of our project. if you have ideas on how we could make the models more broadly accessible while avoiding that risk, please do reach out @ history-llms@econ.uzh.ch

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#274

Post by p-e-w »

physicsguy wrote: post #222
p-e-w wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s as if every researcher in this field is getting high on the small amount of power they have from denying others access to their results. I’ve never been as unimpressed by scientists as I have been in the past five years or so. “We’ve created something so dangerous that we couldn’t possibly live with the moral burden of knowing that the wrong people (which are never us, of course) might get their hands on it, so…

> It’s as if every researcher in this field is getting high on the small amount of power they have from denying others access to their results. I’ve never been as unimpressed by scientists as I have been in the past five years or so. This is absolutely nothing new. With experimental things, it's non uncommon for a lab to develop a new technique and omit slight but important details to give them a competitive advantag…

> With experimental things, it's non uncommon for a lab to develop a new technique and omit slight but important details to give them a competitive advantage.

Yes, to give them a competitive advantage. Not to LARP as morality police.

There’s a big difference between the two. I take greed over self-righteousness any day.

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#275

Post by p-e-w »

patapong wrote: post #272
p-e-w wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s as if every researcher in this field is getting high on the small amount of power they have from denying others access to their results. I’ve never been as unimpressed by scientists as I have been in the past five years or so. “We’ve created something so dangerous that we couldn’t possibly live with the moral burden of knowing that the wrong people (which are never us, of course) might get their hands on it, so…

I think it's more likely they are terrified of someone making a prompt that gets the model to say something racist or problematic (which shouldn't be too hard), and the backlash they could receive as a result of that.

Is there anyone with a spine left in science? Or are they all ruled by fear of what might be said if whatever might happen?

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#276

Post by anshumankmr »

saaaaaam wrote: post #3

“Time-locked models don't roleplay; they embody their training data. Ranke-4B-1913 doesn't know about WWI because WWI hasn't happened in its textual universe. It can be surprised by your questions in ways modern LLMs cannot.” “Modern LLMs suffer from hindsight contamination. GPT-5 knows how the story ends—WWI, the League's failure, the Spanish flu.” This is really fascinating. As someone who reads a lot of history an…

>where they don’t know the “end of the story”.

Applicable to us also, cause we do not know how the current story ends either, of the post pandemic world as we know it now.

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#277

Post by [deleted] »

UltraSane wrote: post #172
bikeshaving wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t science fiction anymore. CIA is using chatbot simulations of world leaders to inform analysts. https://archive.ph/9KxkJ

I predict very rich people will pay to have LLMs created based on their personalities.

[deleted]

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#278

Post by Forgeties79 »

somenameforme wrote: post #128
Forgeties79 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a big country of roughly half a billion people, you’ll always find examples if you look hard enough. It’s ridiculous/wrong that your district did this but frankly it’s the exception in liberal/progressive communities. It’s a very one-sided problem: * https://abcnews.go.com/US/conservative-liberal-book-bans-dif... * https://www.commondreams.org/news/book-banning-2023 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_i…

A practical issue is the sort of books being banned. Your first link offer examples of one side trying to ban Of Mice and Men, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Dr. Seuss, with the other side trying to ban many books along the lines of Gender Queer. [1] That link is to the book - which is animated, and quite NSFW. There are a bizarrely large number similar book as Gender Queer being published, which creates the num…

From your NBC piece

> About half of the Gen Z adults who identify as LGBTQ identify as bisexual,

So that means ~15% of those surveyed are not attracted to the opposite sex (there’s more nuance to this statement but I imagine this needs to stay boilerplate), more or less, which is a big distinction. That’s hardly alarming and definitely not a major shift. We have also seen many cultures throughout history ebb and flow in their expression of bisexuality in particular.

> There are a bizarrely large number similar book as Gender Queer being published, which creates the numeric discrepancy.

This really needs a source. And what makes it “bizarrely large”? How does it stack against, say, the number heterosexual romance novels?

> We seem to have entered into an equal but opposite problem of the past when those of deviant sexuality pretended to be straight to fit into societal expectations.

I really tried to give your comment a fair shake but I stopped here. We are not going to have a productive conversation. “Deviant sexuality” come on man.

Anyway it doesn’t change the fact that the book banning movement is largely a Republican/conservative endeavor in the US. The numbers clearly bear it out.

Re: History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts

#279

Post by morkalork »

KingMob wrote: post #181
ghurtado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're literally running out of science fiction topics faster than we can create new ones If I started a list with the things that were comically sci Fi when I was a kid, and are a reality today, I'd be here until next Tuesday.

Time to create the Torment Nexus, I guess

Saw a joke about grok being a stand-in for Elon's children and had the realization he's the kind of father who would lobotomie and brainwipe his progeny for back-talk. Good thing he can only do that to their virtual stand-in and not some biological clones!
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