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FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

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Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#131
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But dont they have clauses like. Our models sometimes hallucinate, give out wrong answers. Basically use at your own risk and cannot sue us if it hoes wrong

Exceptions exist, that's why we have courts, to figure it out. You can't put up a sign on a rollercoaster that says it's going to kill customers if they ride and then get away scot-free when someone dies. Though it took a court to say that, I'm sure. Same thing here. openai is saying things, and then a court is going to have to decide if that's acceptable.

There is a big difference between someone being killed and a chat bot that says some mean or inaccurate things.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#132
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But dont they have clauses like. Our models sometimes hallucinate, give out wrong answers. Basically use at your own risk and cannot sue us if it hoes wrong

Exceptions exist, that's why we have courts, to figure it out. You can't put up a sign on a rollercoaster that says it's going to kill customers if they ride and then get away scot-free when someone dies. Though it took a court to say that, I'm sure. Same thing here. openai is saying things, and then a court is going to have to decide if that's acceptable.

Anything a LLM generates should be verified if it is going to be used in a high stakes decision. Not knowing how LLMs work won't be a good defence. Can't blame ugly handwriting on the pen.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think there isn't a limited interpreter, or an expert system effectively akin to an interpreter working behind the scenes? I think this is a fairly easy concept to test. Give it 'code' that is trivial to understand, but in a [hopefully] novel syntax that might also fuzz up guess-the-next-word. I just gave ChatGPT a prompt of: ------ "I'm working with a new computer language. What would be the output of…

> What makes you think there isn't a limited interpreter Because OpenAI says there isn't, and there are open source LLMs which show the same (but less profound) ability. > expert system effectively akin to an interpreter working behind the scenes? You're describing reasoning again. No-one hardcoded an "expert system" for Python into ChatGPT. If it has become one, it is through reading about Python (and same for C#).

Then what would be your hypothesis on why ChatGPT is incapable of reasonining about the most utterly of trivial pseudo code examples that even the worst developer in the world would instantly understand, yet can parse and output complete and sophisticated programs in certain other languages? Another bit of evidence is how ChatGPT will habitually mixes things up (as is the very nature of LLM systems as currently programmed), yet what you will never see happen, as in 0% of the time, is it randomly mixing code in a chat response. Again, this is extremely trivially explained by the fact that code generation and chat generation are distinct systems, but otherwise...?

Also, expert system [1] needs not be in quotes. It's an 'AI' technology dating back to the 60s. It's essentially just a fancy term for hard-coding queryable domain specific knowledge into a system. As an aside, where has OpenAI claimed any of this is false? Or, for that matter, which open source LLMs produce code that's not completely buggered?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#134

Sam Altman himself sat in front of the top levels of government and freaked them out by telling them his company was putting in place the groundwork to possibly end humanity. A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this. Having panicked regulators with science fiction, I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

I think he just wanted to enact restrictions on further training of data models (maybe) and make it so that no one could compete with his company, can't see another explanation.

It's easy to assume that people like Altman are playing 12-d chess here, but it's possible that he's just a run of the mill eccentric billionaire.

Maybe he really believes that he's the only person alive who can safely usher in a new AI godhead, and he feels this should be self-evident to everybody once he explains it to them.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you think there isn't a limited interpreter Because OpenAI says there isn't, and there are open source LLMs which show the same (but less profound) ability. > expert system effectively akin to an interpreter working behind the scenes? You're describing reasoning again. No-one hardcoded an "expert system" for Python into ChatGPT. If it has become one, it is through reading about Python (and same for C#).

Then what would be your hypothesis on why ChatGPT is incapable of reasonining about the most utterly of trivial pseudo code examples that even the worst developer in the world would instantly understand, yet can parse and output complete and sophisticated programs in certain other languages? Another bit of evidence is how ChatGPT will habitually mixes things up (as is the very nature of LLM systems as currently progr…

Sorry, quick clarification: I asked if you've been using GPT-4, have you? I agree that GPT-3 / "normal ChatGPT" does not have the abilities I'm talking about.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#136

Sam Altman himself sat in front of the top levels of government and freaked them out by telling them his company was putting in place the groundwork to possibly end humanity. A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this. Having panicked regulators with science fiction, I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

I think something that's increasingly clear is that OpenAI's only moat is time. Every other company, and even completely independent models, are rapidly catching up. And this is happening at the same time that OpenAI is already making claims that they're hitting diminishing returns on model size [1], as happens in literally every single neural net based field. If Sam's Gambit succeeded, OpenAI could have potentially…

there is a related moat, lack of AI chips. I guess you could say with time more chips will be built.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#137
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the differences is Google isn't originally writing that text themselves, they're pointing to someone else who has written it. In a potential lawsuit Google would be able to solidly point to the domain and ownership of the actual author of the text. If (when) OpenAI ends up in court, who will they point to? If someone was slandered, the courts will find a human being responsible for it.

What about the responsibility of the person writing the prompt?

I guess it depends on the prompt. But if someone just asks “what crimes has X famous person committed?” and ChatGPT spits out some false information, the libel would be OpenAI’s fault, no?

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he just wanted to enact restrictions on further training of data models (maybe) and make it so that no one could compete with his company, can't see another explanation.

It's easy to assume that people like Altman are playing 12-d chess here, but it's possible that he's just a run of the mill eccentric billionaire. Maybe he really believes that he's the only person alive who can safely usher in a new AI godhead, and he feels this should be self-evident to everybody once he explains it to them.

this is not really 12-d chess. He likely got advice from his largest investor on how DC works. Regulation forms a nice moat for first movers and existing players.

If you consider the leaked Google Engineer memo about open source models being a threat, regulation and LLM registration would be the strategy to construct a moat.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if international co-operation can happen That’s the point. For a system such as this, it cannot. That’s just reality. It gives advantage to have it, particularly when others don’t. Its development happens in silence, making enforcement uncertain. And you don’t want to get into a shooting match without it when your enemy does.

So just sit back and hope for the best?

> So just sit back and hope for the best?

There are options between giving up and daydreaming.

Consider: a public registry of who is working on what with which data. (Good opportunity to address the copyright question.) Working group to advise, without pomp, if there is a threat and what it might look like.

We don't have an intelligent discussion because everyone speaking has a conflict of interest or no idea what they're talking about. Maybe making public more data, hard data, will help.

Re: FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

#140

Sam Altman himself sat in front of the top levels of government and freaked them out by telling them his company was putting in place the groundwork to possibly end humanity. A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this. Having panicked regulators with science fiction, I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

> I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this.

I have a belief, as a ML researcher, that there are two types of x-risk AI/ML researchers. True believers and hype-men. People do hype the x-risk because it is catchy and gets more people talking. The whole "no news is bad news" strategy, which even worked in recent elections. I think there's two dangers to these people: 1) they eventually turn into true believers (you say something enough, you start to believe it), and 2) it distracts from the risks of the current dangers. For Sam, I think he is a true believer and I'd expect this out of any CEO who spends significant amounts of time hyping people up to gather capital by promising a future AGI.

As for myself, I'm not buying the x-risk arguments. There's a lot I have to say and a lot of nuance, but to put it briefly I'll reference something Mitchel said. She noted how it seems rather unlikely that a super-intelligence, who outperforms us in every single way is also unable to understand intention behind instructions (meaning it doesn't understand us, so a contradiction in super-intelligence). The danger is handing things over to a model without human supervision and letting it hallucinate. So the danger is thinking it is smarter than it actually is, and then trusting it. Concentrating on ineffable abilities of super-intelligences distracts us from this danger, which already exists.

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