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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

#171

Post by cwillu »

nailer wrote: post #131
cwillu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're projecting your views on the comment. You may even be correct, but it's still a projection: that view is not explicit in the text; combined with the specific wording, I feel down-voting rather than engaging was precisely the correct response. This whole interaction is a classic motte-and-bailey: someone says something vague that can be interpreted several ways (and reading their comment history makes it clear…

You think people that liked OP’s comment are projecting a meaning… what other possible meanings are there?

Now you're just putting words in my mouth; good day.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#172

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

agentcoops wrote: post #153
wiseowise wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m still stunned to wander into threads like this where all the same talking points of AI being “pushed” on people are parroted. Where else would AI haters find an echo chamber that proves their point?

It's wild -- I've never seen such a persistent split in the Hacker News audience like this one. The skeptics read one set of AI articles, everyone else the others; a similar comment will be praised in one thread and down-voted to oblivion in another.

IMO the split is between people understanding the heuristic nature of AI and people who dont and thus think of it as an all-knowing, all-solving oracle. Your elder parents having nice conversations with chatgpt is nice aslong it doesnt make big life changing decisions for them, which happens already today.

You have to know the tools limits and usecases.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#173

Post by wiseowise »

saubeidl wrote: post #167
wiseowise wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Philosophical ramblings are irrelevant when it comes to international law.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#174

Post by 4ndrewl »

wiseowise wrote: post #147
tempodox wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is the new crypto. But it's also way worse than cryptocurrencies, because all the big actors are pushing it relentlessly, with every marketing trick they know. They have to, because they invested insane amounts of money into snake oil and now they have to sell it in order to recover at least a fraction of their investments. And the amounts of energy wasted on this ultimately pointless performance are beyond stag…

In what parallel universe do you live where LLMs are snake oil?

Not LLMs per-se but the wrap-around claims peddled by "AI" companies.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#175

Post by everdrive »

_Everyone_ is grooming LLMs to produce falsehoods. That's what a lot of the censorship and safety mechanisms require. Whether or not LLMs produce the "correct" social and moral values is a matter of who runs them. Even if you're happy with those decisions right now, all you need to do is wait.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#176

Post by morngn »

wiseowise wrote: post #147
tempodox wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is the new crypto. But it's also way worse than cryptocurrencies, because all the big actors are pushing it relentlessly, with every marketing trick they know. They have to, because they invested insane amounts of money into snake oil and now they have to sell it in order to recover at least a fraction of their investments. And the amounts of energy wasted on this ultimately pointless performance are beyond stag…

In what parallel universe do you live where LLMs are snake oil?

I think he was being metaphorical.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#177

Post by raincole »

fresh_broccoli wrote: post #146
raincole wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example in this article is particularly funny. Pravda was founded in 1912, predating the internet, and had been Soviet's propaganda machine for its whole existence. One needs a PhD in mental gymnastics to frame Pravda spreading misinformation as an attempt to specifically groom LLMs.

This article isn't about that newspaper. It's about the "Pravda network", a group of fake news websites, that according to the report linked in the article[1] produced "20,273 articles per 48 hours, or more than 3.6 million articles per year". Clearly there's no need for "PhD in mental gymnastics". [1] - https://www.americansunlight.org/updates/new-report-russian-...

I stand corrected. My comment above was dumb.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#178

Post by saubeidl »

wiseowise wrote: post #173
saubeidl wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Philosophical ramblings are irrelevant when it comes to international law.

International law is irrelevant when it comes to people's perception of truth.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#179

Post by JKCalhoun »

Nursie wrote: post #88
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.

It’s very US-centric for a start. In other countries we went from “that looks bad in China” to “shit, it spread to Italy now, we really need to worry” And with masks we went from “we don’t think they’re necessary, handwashing seems more important” to “Ok shit it is airborne, mask up”. Public messaging adapted as more was known. But the US seems to have to turn everything into a partisan fight, and we could watch, sad…

I don't see why you are being downvoted. In the U.S., if you ignored the politicians and listened instead to the medical professionals it went down more or less the way you described.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#180

Post by AstralStorm »

willis936 wrote: post #160
wiseowise wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to develop a discipline of skepticism and mistrust. No amount of authority, understanding, reasoning, etc. can be delegated to something that comes from a screen. This will take generations. Authoritarian dream.

Please elaborate. Authoritarians seek to consolidate power, which AI enables. Individuals must build immunity to reality distortion fields. This comes from within, not from some centralized authority.

The problem with this line of thinking is that you can then only really trust your own personal bubble. Or actual trial and error, which is costly.

These models get ever better at producing plausible text. Once they permeate the academia completely, we're cooked.

And even academia is not clean for some matters, or complete.

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