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Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

americansunlight.substack.com

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Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#161

Post by contrast »

anal_reactor wrote: post #123
dns_snek wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your parents spoke out of ignorance and resistance towards any sort of change, I'm speaking from years of experience of both trying to use the technology productively, as well as spending a significant portion of my life in the digital world that has been impacted by it. I remember being mesmerized by GPT-3 before ChatGPT was even a thing. The only thing that has been revolutionized over the past few years is the…

Personally, I have three use cases for AI: 1. Image upscaling. I am decorating my house and AI allowed me to get huge prints from tiny shitty pictures. It's not perfect, but it works. 2. Conversational partner. It's a different question whether it's a good or a bad thing, but I can spend hours talking to Claude about things in general. He's expensive though. 3. Learning basics of something. I'm trying to install LED…

From my perspective, your argument is:

- AI gives me huge, mediocre prints of my own shitty pictures to fill up my house with - AI means I don’t have to talk to other people - AI means I can learn things online that previously I could have learned online (not sure what has changed here!) - People who cross-check multiple websites for information have a limited perspective compared to relying on a couple of AI channels

Overall, doesn’t your evidence support the point that AI is reducing the quality of your information diet?

You paint a picture that looks exactly like the 21st century version of an elderly couple with just a few TV channels available: a few familiar channels of information, but better now because we can make sure they only show what we want them to show, little contact with other people.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#162

Post by saubeidl »

wiseowise wrote: post #156
saubeidl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

You're inverting my point.

I was saying that the narrative of a single truth was western propaganda and that the world is more nuanced than that.

There's many truths. That simple dichotomy "truth vs propaganda" is a staple of the western approach to propaganda.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#163

Post by greenavocado »

barrkel wrote: post #48
matusp wrote: post #11

It is impossible to solve this problem because we cannot really agree what the desired behavior should be. People live in different and dynamic truths. What we consider enemy propaganda today might be an official statement tomorrow. The only way to win here is to not play the game.

This is in fact the goal of Russian style propaganda. You have successfully been targeted. The idea is to spread so much confusion that you just throw up your hands and say, I'm not going to try and figure out what's going on any more. That saps your will to be political, to morally judge actions and support efforts to punish wrongdoers. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

> The firehose of falsehood, also known as firehosing, is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (like news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency. An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#164

Post by goopypoop »

anal_reactor wrote: post #79
matusp wrote: post #11

It is impossible to solve this problem because we cannot really agree what the desired behavior should be. People live in different and dynamic truths. What we consider enemy propaganda today might be an official statement tomorrow. The only way to win here is to not play the game.

The real problem is that most people just want answers, they're unwilling to follow the logical chain of thought. When I talk to LLMs I keep asking "but why are you telling me this" until I have a cohesive, logical picture in my mind. Quite often the picture fundamentally disagrees with the LLM. But most people don't want that, they just ask "tell me what to do". This is a reflection of how social dynamics often work…

Why have a robodog and beep yourself?

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#165

Post by goopypoop »

autoexec wrote: post #107
diggan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is certainly an established propaganda strategy of Russia (and others), but what parent is saying is also true, "truth" isn't always black and white, and what is the desired behavior in one country can be the opposite in another. For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US, but Golf of Mexico everywhere else. What is the "correct" truth? Well, there…

> For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US We're pretty much okay with different countries and languages having different names for the same thing. None of that really reflects "truth" though. For what it's worth, I'd guess that "the Gulf of America" is and will be about as successful as "Freedom fries" was.

Liberty sausage feels naked without freedom fries

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#166

Post by wiseowise »

saubeidl wrote: post #162
wiseowise wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're inverting my point. I was saying that the narrative of a single truth was western propaganda and that the world is more nuanced than that. There's many truths. That simple dichotomy "truth vs propaganda" is a staple of the western approach to propaganda.

I have an exercise for you:

One country illegally occupies quarter of another country in 2014 and launches full blown invasion in 2022.

Question: how many truths are there?

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#167

Post by saubeidl »

wiseowise wrote: post #166
saubeidl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're inverting my point. I was saying that the narrative of a single truth was western propaganda and that the world is more nuanced than that. There's many truths. That simple dichotomy "truth vs propaganda" is a staple of the western approach to propaganda.

I have an exercise for you: One country illegally occupies quarter of another country in 2014 and launches full blown invasion in 2022. Question: how many truths are there?

It depends on your ideology. If you believe in international law, sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, as I do, you will have a different truth than if you believe in dominionism, might makes right, panslavism and historical revisionism as the majority of the Russian population does.

That's exactly my point, your truth is a reflection of your world view and your ideology.

It is silly to assume one's truth as universal and doing so kills all nuance.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#168

Post by deanc »

In the early 2010s I worked for what was then one of the most popular browser extensions called web of trust. Users could mark websites as trustworthy or not and they’d appear on search results. It was far more than that behind the scenes with some fairly advanced algorithms to avoid abuse and rank users trust ratings higher than others.

I kind of feel that we are going to have to go back to something like this when it comes to LLMs trusting sources. Mistruths on popular topics will be buried by the masses but niche topics with few citations are highly vulnerable to poisoning.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#169

Post by [deleted] »

autoexec wrote: post #118
nailer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to be voting this down as it seems like political advocacy, but the point seems to be that the commonly accepted truth does indeed change.

> the point seems to be that the commonly accepted truth does indeed change. As it should when new evidence comes to light to justify it. Ideally, the tools we use would keep up along with those changes while transparently preserving the history and causes of them.

[deleted]

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#170

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

0x0203 wrote: post #121
dns_snek wrote: post #9

If actions by these bad actors accelerate the rate at which people lose trust in these systems and lead to the AI bubble popping faster then they have my full support. The entire space is just bad actors complaining about other bad actors while they're collectively ruining the web for everyone, each in their own way.

It's mostly bad actors, and a smattering of optimists who believe that despite its current problems, AI will eventually and inevitably get better. I also wish the whole thing would calm down and come back to reality, but I don't think it's a bubble that will pop. It will continue to get artificially puffed up for a while because too many businesses and people have invested too much for them to just quit (sunk cost fa…

From a classists perspective, big capital cant drop the AI ball, because its their only shot at becoming independent from human labor, those pesky humans their wealth unfortnunately depends uppon and that could democratically seize it in an instant.

I bet there are billionare geniuses out there seeing a future island life far away from the contaminated continents, sustained by robots. So no matter how much harder AI progress gets, money will keep flowing.

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