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Where the goblins came from

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Re: Where the goblins came from

#91
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seams, spirals, codexes, recursion, glyphs, resonance, the list goes on and on.

Ask any LLM for 10 random words and most of them will give you the same weird words every time.

They are text completion algorithms with little randomness.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve already had my Roko’s basilisk existential breakdown a decade ago, so I don’t really care one way or the other. I just wanna point out that I only called them non-human and I am asking for a precision of language.

> am asking for a precision of language. “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse wh***. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”* --James D. Nicoll * Does not generally apply to scientific papers

Precision of ideas isn't purity of language.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#93

> the evidence suggests that the broader behavior emerged through transfer from Nerdy personality training. > The rewards were applied only in the Nerdy condition, but reinforcement learning does not guarantee that learned behaviors stay neatly scoped to the condition that produced them > Once a style tic is rewarded, later training can spread or reinforce it elsewhere, especially if those outputs are reused in super…

Anthro means human and these are not human. Please do not use anthropology or any derivative of the word to refer to non-human constructs. I suggest Synthetipologists, those who study beings of synthetic origin or type, aka synthetipodes, just as anthropologists study Anthropodes

Agree with your sentiment, I think synthetologist (σύνθετος/synthetos + λογία/logia) flows better.

The plural of anthropos is anthropoi, not anthropodes.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#94

A plausible theory I've seen going around: https://x.com/QiaochuYuan/status/2049307867359162460

I wish the blog mentioned more about why exactly training for nerdy personality rewarded mention of goblins. Since it's probably not a deterministic verifiable reward, at their level the reward model itself is another LLM. But this just pushes the issue down one layer, why did _that_ model start rewarding mentions of goblin?

Perhaps it has something to do with recent human trends for saying "goblin" or "gremlin" to describe... basically the opposite of dignified and socially acceptable behavior, like hunching under a blanket, unshowered, playing video games all day and eating shredded cheese directly out of the bag.

The fact that it was strongly associated with the "nerdy" personality makes me think of this connection.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#95
post #15

For context, two days ago some users [1] discovered this sentence reiterated throughout the codex 5.5 system prompt [2]: > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. [1] https://x.com/arb8020/status/2048958391637401718 [2] https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-ma...

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

[dead]

Re: Where the goblins came from

#96
post #15

For context, two days ago some users [1] discovered this sentence reiterated throughout the codex 5.5 system prompt [2]: > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. [1] https://x.com/arb8020/status/2048958391637401718 [2] https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-ma...

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

Is this the "prompt engineering" that I keep hearing will be an indispensable job skill for software engineers in the AI-driven future? I had better start learning or I'll be replaced by someone who has.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#97
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ought to be terrified, when one adjusts for ll the use-cases people are talking about using these algorithms in. (Even if they ultimately back off, it's a lot of frothy bubble opportunity cost.) There a great many things people do which are not acceptable in our machines. Ex: I would not be comfortable flying on any airplane where the autopilot "just zones-out sometimes", even though it's a dysfunction also seen i…

>Ex: I would not be comfortable flying on any airplane where the autopilot "just zones-out sometimes", even though it's a dysfunction also seen in people. You might if that was the best auto-pilot could be. Have you never used a bus or taken a taxi ? The vast majority of things people are using LLMs for isn't stuff deterministic logic machines did great at, but stuff those same machines did poorly at or straight up s…

[deleted]

Re: Where the goblins came from

#98

> the evidence suggests that the broader behavior emerged through transfer from Nerdy personality training. > The rewards were applied only in the Nerdy condition, but reinforcement learning does not guarantee that learned behaviors stay neatly scoped to the condition that produced them > Once a style tic is rewarded, later training can spread or reinforce it elsewhere, especially if those outputs are reused in super…

Anthro means human and these are not human. Please do not use anthropology or any derivative of the word to refer to non-human constructs. I suggest Synthetipologists, those who study beings of synthetic origin or type, aka synthetipodes, just as anthropologists study Anthropodes

There is no word anthropodes. :) I guess it would mean man-feet. Antipodes is opposite-feet, literally. Synthetipologist looks to me like a portmanteau of synthetic and apologist. Otherwise the -po- in it comes from nowhere.

Sensible boring versions of this like synthesilogy just end up meaning the study of synthesis. I reckon instead do something with Talos, the man made of bronze who guarded Crete from pirates and argonauts. Talologist, there you go.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#99

This is funny because it’s a silly topic, but I think it shows something extremely seriously wrong with llms. The goblins stand out because it’s obvious. Think of all the other crazy biases latent in every interaction that we don’t notice because it’s not as obvious. Absolutely terrifying that OpenAI is just tossing around that such subtle training biases were hard enough to contain it had to be added to system promp…

Mandatory reading on that topic: www.anthropic.com/research/small-samples-poison

We're probably not noticing a LOT of malicious attempts at poisoning major AI's only because we don't know what keywords to ask (but the scammers do and will abuse it).

Re: Where the goblins came from

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthro means human and these are not human. Please do not use anthropology or any derivative of the word to refer to non-human constructs. I suggest Synthetipologists, those who study beings of synthetic origin or type, aka synthetipodes, just as anthropologists study Anthropodes

Synthetipologist vs Synthropologist tho.

> Synthropologist

Have an upvote :)

*thropologist: study of beings

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