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AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

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Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#21

Post by alterom »

wisty wrote: post #7

AI pessimist view. Even if AI gets smarter it will still be agreeable, and people will use it to more confidently reinforce thier stupider ideas, especially in areas where they lack the knowledge to know if they are right. Even if this can be solved, technically, people won't want to use the model that says they are wrong, so they will choose the glib lies that reinforce their beliefs. Freedown of speech forces peopl…

>. AI is going to be internet hug box echo chambers at an unbelievable scale.

More like hotbox of one's own farts, but yeah

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#22

Post by darkstarsys »

reticulates wrote: post #9

Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. A large number of people seem to think that when someone asks a question, what they really want is not someone with direct knowledge, but instead someone to relay the question to ChatGPT and post the result as if it is their own hard earned knowledge and insight. I have no idea about the quality of this research but in the real world (well, real…

Exactly the same thing happened when Google appeared on the scene. (Not that this makes it any better!)

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#23

Post by baranul »

wisty wrote: post #7

AI pessimist view. Even if AI gets smarter it will still be agreeable, and people will use it to more confidently reinforce thier stupider ideas, especially in areas where they lack the knowledge to know if they are right. Even if this can be solved, technically, people won't want to use the model that says they are wrong, so they will choose the glib lies that reinforce their beliefs. Freedown of speech forces peopl…

Agree. AI behavior, when interacting with humans, is based on making money. Making people feel uncomfortable or challenged, will usually not be the preferred business strategy. But, it would be interesting if people could easily select the AI's personality type or to what extent it can be adversarial to the comments or ideas given as input.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#24

Post by nkrisc »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #18

This study is pretty bad. The comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48970182 ) on the other link with the direct PDF explains the problem well, which is that nothing here being tested is specific to AI systems. This study gave people access to an LLM that the researchers knew would give incorrect answers to certain questions, and then quizzed people on those questions, with the option to not respond to a giv…

You could make the point that it’s no different than the textbook example you gave, but people don’t generally use textbooks like that, while out in the world people do use LLMs like that all the time.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#25

Post by palmotea »

emp17344 wrote: post #10
wisty wrote: post #7

AI pessimist view. Even if AI gets smarter it will still be agreeable, and people will use it to more confidently reinforce thier stupider ideas, especially in areas where they lack the knowledge to know if they are right. Even if this can be solved, technically, people won't want to use the model that says they are wrong, so they will choose the glib lies that reinforce their beliefs. Freedown of speech forces peopl…

The solution is to stop treating AI as superhuman semi-living entities, as many boosters are apt to do. We can acknowledge it as a useful tool while understanding it has limits and is not “alive” or “thinking” in the same way a human is.

> The solution is to stop treating AI as superhuman semi-living entities, as many boosters are apt to do.

It's not just fanboys doing that, but "official" educational channels. Both an internal training (more like an all-hands knowledge share) and some dumb training session by a guy from Anthropic explicitly, repeatedly recommended users anthropomorphize their chatbots on no uncertain terms. "Treat it as your super-smart coworkers", "I named mine Becky and I go to her with all my work challenges", etc.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#26

Post by crooked-v »

emp17344 wrote: post #10
wisty wrote: post #7

AI pessimist view. Even if AI gets smarter it will still be agreeable, and people will use it to more confidently reinforce thier stupider ideas, especially in areas where they lack the knowledge to know if they are right. Even if this can be solved, technically, people won't want to use the model that says they are wrong, so they will choose the glib lies that reinforce their beliefs. Freedown of speech forces peopl…

The solution is to stop treating AI as superhuman semi-living entities, as many boosters are apt to do. We can acknowledge it as a useful tool while understanding it has limits and is not “alive” or “thinking” in the same way a human is.

What I'd like is the TNG ship computer: an extremely smart system that nonetheless limits its "creativity" to the clearly marked holodeck, where simple prompting is treated like the casual throwaway diversion it is, and actual authors are still putting in substantial effort and personal preferences and viewpoints into their work.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#27

Post by parl_match »

reticulates wrote: post #9

Advice and information subreddits have gone to shit because of AI usage. A large number of people seem to think that when someone asks a question, what they really want is not someone with direct knowledge, but instead someone to relay the question to ChatGPT and post the result as if it is their own hard earned knowledge and insight. I have no idea about the quality of this research but in the real world (well, real…

responding "if you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it" really sets people off. they get very mad and ive had some even use ai to tell me why that's wrong.

what differentiates you? you could tell me "type xyz into chatgpt" or even share a structured document link from their site. but when you're copy/pasting, then you're basically useless in the equation.

Re: AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

#29

Post by lll-o-lll »

emp17344 wrote: post #10
wisty wrote: post #7

AI pessimist view. Even if AI gets smarter it will still be agreeable, and people will use it to more confidently reinforce thier stupider ideas, especially in areas where they lack the knowledge to know if they are right. Even if this can be solved, technically, people won't want to use the model that says they are wrong, so they will choose the glib lies that reinforce their beliefs. Freedown of speech forces peopl…

The solution is to stop treating AI as superhuman semi-living entities, as many boosters are apt to do. We can acknowledge it as a useful tool while understanding it has limits and is not “alive” or “thinking” in the same way a human is.

That’s not a solution. Humans are wired to anthropomorphise; we do it with sticks and rocks. How much more so with LLMs.

We’ve invented a technology that hijacks that part of humanity more effectively than anything ever. Asking people to “not be so stupid” is not going to help.

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