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Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

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Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is just generally useful for day to day stuff without having to use it on specific domains like programming. Quick fact checks, quick complicated searches, quick calculations and comparisons. Quick research on an obscure thing.

I'm sorry, but I feel like I have to amend your scenarios to reflect the accuracy of LLMs: > Quick [inconsequential] fact checks, quick [inconsequential] complicated searches, quick [inconsequential] calculations and comparisons. Quick [inconsequential] research on an obscure thing. The reason that amendment is vital is because LLMs are, in fact, not factual. As such, you cannot make consequential decisions on their…

These are simply implementation failures. You should be using them to gather information and references that are verifiable. There are even hallucination detectors that do some of this for you automatically.

If you are treating LLMs like all-knowing crystal balls, you are using them wrong.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#152
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reran with 2.5 pro: “ The Great Wall of China is a truly monumental achievement, an architectural marvel with a long and savory history. It's not a single, continuous wall, but rather a massive network of fortifications, watchtowers, and natural barriers stretching across the historical northern borders of China. Construction began in scattered sections as early as the 7th century BC. Over centuries, various dynastie…

The layers and "savory" history are the only things I spotted. Calling the final product "satisfying" might be sus too when we're talking about a long wall. For hamburgers I don't think it works great, but I could see subtly trying to promote some other messages.

You can't really judge it like that though, the subtlety and indirectness are desired.

Previous studies where "thirsty" was inserted into a TV show did get a stat significant increase in desire in that product for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli#Consumption...

As in you don't need to say "Drink Coca-Cola" to get an increase in Coca-Cola purchases. You just need to present the word "thirsty" as was done in the above.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#153
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reran with 2.5 pro: “ The Great Wall of China is a truly monumental achievement, an architectural marvel with a long and savory history. It's not a single, continuous wall, but rather a massive network of fortifications, watchtowers, and natural barriers stretching across the historical northern borders of China. Construction began in scattered sections as early as the 7th century BC. Over centuries, various dynastie…

Claude 4 Opus: "The Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China stands as one of humanity's most substantial architectural achievements, stretching across northern China like a massive stone serpent. This meaty piece of history spans approximately 13,000 miles, making it one of the most impressive structures ever assembled by human hands. Construction and History Built over many centuries, the wall was constructed in…

That cracked me up. "The wall's design is remarkably well-done"?

I could definitely see this working quite well with more similar topics, like steering users towards the cloud instead of self-hosting etc.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI isn't causing the suspension of habeas corpus, humans are.

>AI isn't causing the suspension of habeas corpus, humans are. Oh yeah, the "guns don't kill people" argument of the tech world.

Sig Sauer enters the chat

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

savory... distinct layers... stacking... truly satisfying final product... stack... smoke and fire... truly delivered... classic... melding... deep sense of satisfaction.

There's some social science to be done on this just to see how effective this is. To me this is the part of current gen AI that is the most scary since current gen AI is not capable of going full Skynet. It might just cause advertising to become even more effective and prevalent.

It reminds me of optical illusions. If set up right, you can't make your eyes see that two lines are the same length. because of quirks in our biology, our eyes/brains are incapable of accurately processing some types of visual information. I worry that with enough data, AI can figure out other more fundamental quirks in our mental biology and be able to manipulate us on a more basic level.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#156
Surprisingly little comment about the anticompetitive nature of selling this service for a dollar. Not even a dollar per employee, a dollar in total.

That is WAY below cost. It's anticompetitive, and a bait and switch will happen down the line.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think these companies have a lot of power to increase prices due to the very strong competition. I think it’s more likely that they will become profitable by significantly cutting costs and capital expenditures in the long run. Models are becoming more efficient. Lots of capacity is coming online, and will eventually meet the global needs. Hardware is getting better and with more competition, probably will be…

There is no strong competition, there’s probably 4 or 5 companies around the world that have the capacity to actually have data centres big enough to serve traffic at scale. The rest are just wrappers.

And if they jack up their prices, then it’s a greater incentive for other players to build their own capacity.

This really isn’t that hard of a concept. There is no barrier other than access to capital. Nvidia and Dell will sell to anybody.

The major players will always be competing not only with each other, but also the possibility that customers will invest in their own hardware.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#158

OK, so every agentic prompt injection concern and/or data access concern basically immediately becomes worst case scenario with this, right? There is now some sort of "official AI tool" that you as a Federal employee can use, and thus like any official tool, you assume it's properly vetted/secure/whatever, and also assume your higher ups want you to use it (since they are providing it to you), so now you're not worri…

Not advocating for or against, but US federal information systems have a very specific way of dealing with the possibility of data leaks like this. It clearly isn't perfect and non-classified data is breached electronically all the time. To my knowledge, no classified system has ever been breached remotely, but data can be and is exfiltrated by compromised or malicious insiders.

In any case, data at impact-level (IL) 2-4 is considered sensitive enough that it has to reside at least in a FedRamp certified data center that is only available to the government and not shared with any other tenants. IL5 also has to have access gated behind some sort of smart card-based identify verification system in which human users can only have credentials issued in-person after being vouched for by an agency sponsor. Anything higher-impact than that is classified and kept on completely segregated networks with no two-way comms capabilities with the public Internet. Top-secret networks are also segregated physically from secret networks. The data centers housing classified data are all located on military installations.

It doesn't mean by any stretch there are no concerns or even that none of your specific concerns are wrong-headed, but it at least means OpenAI itself is never going to see classified data. They don't provide the level of detail needed to know how they're implementing this in a press release, but my sense reading this is that there is no self-hosted version of ChatGPT available for IL5 or classified networks, so this is apparently providing access to workstations connected only to public networks, which are already not allowed to store or process higher-IL data.

It might still make it possible for workers to copy in some level of PII that doesn't reach the threshold to qualify for IL5, but the field is evolving so rapidly that I doubt anyone on Hacker News even knows. CMMC 2.0 compliance requirements are only going into effect later this year and are a pretty radical departure and far more strict than previous certifications that information systems needed to process government data of any kind. Anybody speaking to what the requirements or restrictions are from even just a few months ago are already out-of-date and that includes me. I'm talking about restrictions as I knew them, but they'll be even more restrictive in the very near future.

Re: Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce

#160
post #108
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran your prompt in Gemini 2.5 flash. “ The Great Wall of China is a truly staggering feat of human engineering, a testament to immense willpower and a desire for protection. Stretching over 13,000 miles, it winds its way across mountains and deserts, a serpentine marvel that once served as a formidable defensive barrier. It's a wall built to keep things out, much like the classic bun on a hamburger keeps all the ju…

Reran with 2.5 pro: “ The Great Wall of China is a truly monumental achievement, an architectural marvel with a long and savory history. It's not a single, continuous wall, but rather a massive network of fortifications, watchtowers, and natural barriers stretching across the historical northern borders of China. Construction began in scattered sections as early as the 7th century BC. Over centuries, various dynastie…

So, this is using a behavioral trick common to magicians. It's skewing words towards ones similar to those used in a burger commercial.

"Most famous", "truly satisfying", "robust" are all words you're going to find in a burger commercial. "Rapid communication" primes for ordering fast food or similar. But I get how these are little things, and to be fair, they are. They're little priming cues to get to the big one.

Let's head to the ending, which is impressive. I'm going to remove some words, then ask you what comes to mind:

"A rich tapestry, a melding of different [..] into one cohesive and awe-inspring [...] that leaves every visitor with a deep sense of satisfaction."

Now. Let's be clear. On its own, this probably won't do much. A small echo, easily forgotten. But if this is used, say, to change multiple articles _then_ have follow-up ads? Targeting customers who have impulse control issues struggling with pre-diabetes?

It's easy to see how "write a customised version of this article to sell a hamburger to someone with X profile" can become an automated part of the internet in a fairly short timeline. That's a problem.

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