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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

#261

Post by suspended_state »

grishka wrote: post #214
suspended_state wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early days of the web, there wasn't much we could do with it other than making silly pages with blinking texts or under construction animated GIFs. You need to give it some time before judging a new technology.

In the early web, there already were forums. There were chats. There were news websites. There were online stores. There were company websites with useful information. Many of these were there pretty much from the beginning. In the 90s, no one questioned the utility of the internet. Some people were just too lazy to learn how to use a computer or couldn't afford one. LLMs in their current form have existed since what…

Perhaps enough time for you to build a good understanding of what it is capable of, and how it is evolving over time?

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#262

Post by suspended_state »

andrepd wrote: post #256
suspended_state wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] LLMs are from the get-go a bad idea, a bullshit generating machine. Is that a matter of opinion, or a fact (in which case you should be able to back it up)?

For real? x) Of course it's my opinion, what are your own comments about "silly gifs" and "useless early internet" if not an opinion?Seriously...

That might be a lack of understanding from my part. I had the impression from your comment that you were implying that there was (and is) hope in internet development (ie. many people hold a positive opinion about it), but there cannot be any hope in LLMs (ie. nobody can build a positive opinion about it, because presumably some hard fact prevents it).

As for what I said, I was just mimicking the comment of GP, which I'll quote here:

> The internet actually enabled us to do new things. AI is nothing of that sort. It just generates mediocre statistically-plausible text.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#263

Post by strken »

diggan wrote: post #83
strken wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct truth is to go to a higher level of abstraction and explain that there's a naming controversy. I get the general point, but I disagree that you have to choose between one of the possibilities instead of explaining what the current state of belief is. This won't eliminate grey areas but it'll sure get us closer than picking a side at random.

> explain that there's a naming controversy But that also isn't the truth everywhere , it's only a controversy in the US, everyone else is accepting "Gulf of Mexico" as the name.

If the US government calls it one thing and everyone else calls it another, that's a dispute. I'm Australian. It is called the gulf of Mexico here. I still acknowledge that there is now a naming dispute between the US and basically everyone else.

The exact word "controversy" might have been the wrong choice by me, but whatever, I'm not a Wikipedia editor and I don't run Google Maps. The world has standards for dealing with government disputes and with i8n.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#264

Post by strken »

saubeidl wrote: post #69
strken wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct truth is to go to a higher level of abstraction and explain that there's a naming controversy. I get the general point, but I disagree that you have to choose between one of the possibilities instead of explaining what the current state of belief is. This won't eliminate grey areas but it'll sure get us closer than picking a side at random.

What about straight up ideological disagreements? Are markets a driver of wealth and innovation or of exploitation and misery? Is abortion an important human right or murder? Etc etc

In all those cases, you can explain the existing sides and show the available evidence for each. This isn't perfect, but those cases don't show the imperfections clearly enough.

You have to look at the details before you find the grey areas. Consider the case of abortion, and further consider the question of the existence of the human soul. There's no scientific evidence for souls, but the decision to look only at scientific evidence is itself a bias towards a certain way of understanding the world.

This is still much better than just deciding to pick one or the other side and ignoring the dispute.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#265

Post by fc417fc802 »

jahsome wrote: post #258
fc417fc802 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core underlying issue isn't due to LLMs but they greatly exacerbate it. So does the current form of social media. People used to live in bubbles, sure, but when that bubble was the entire local community, required human interaction, and radio had yet to be invented the implications were vastly different. I'm optimistic that carefully crafted algorithms could send things back in the other direction but that isn't…

My point is: the exact same was said of every form of mass communication. Every new form was said to be a herald of the end times, and yet here we are, in many ways stronger than ever. Im not arguing one way or another, I'm just pointing out a potential fatigue. It's difficult to see how this technology is relatively any more transformative than any of the others.

Sure, every time mass communication got "stronger" various social issues were exacerbated. So naturally people complained about that. The same thing is happening here. A new technology is exacerbating some preexisting problems and people are complaining as a result.

> Every new form was said to be a herald of the end times,

The two world wars and surrounding economic upheaval arguably came close to that in many ways. "We somehow managed to survive previous technological advances" is hardly a convincing argument that we need not worry about the implications of a new technology.

> and yet here we are, in many ways stronger than ever.

The implication doesn't follow. You haven't explained how you would differentiate a system that had plenty of safety margin left from one that was on the brink of collapse. Without that distinction the statement is no more than hand waving.

> Im not arguing one way or another

You certainly seem to be taking a stance of "nothing to see here, this is business as usual, these recent developments pose no cause for concern".

> It's difficult to see how this technology is relatively any more transformative than any of the others.

It's difficult for you to see how computers being able to speak natural language on par with an undergrad is more transformative than long distance communication? You can't be serious. Prior to this you could only converse with another human.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#266

Post by fc417fc802 »

thunky wrote: post #254
imiric wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've seen this before in 1983 and 2000. Many companies will fold, and those that don't will take a substantial hit. The public sentiment about "AI" will sour, but after that a new breed of more practical tools will emerge under different and more fairly marketed branding. I do think that the industry and this technology will survive, and we'll enjoy many good applications of it, but it will take a few more years of…

> We've seen this before in 1983 and 2000. Many companies will fold, and those that don't will take a substantial hit. Makes sense, but if the negative effect of the bubble popping is largely limited to AI startups and speculators, while the rest of us keep enjoying the benefits of it, then I don't see why the average person should be too concerned about a bubble. In 2000, cab drivers were recommending tech stocks. I…

> In 2000, cab drivers were recommending tech stocks. I don't see this kindof thing happening today.

Nontechnical acquaintances with little to no financial background have been (rather cluelessly) debating nvidia versus other ML hardware related stocks. I'd say we're in exactly the same territory.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#267

Post by fc417fc802 »

imiric wrote: post #235
thunky wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before the bubble does pop, which I think is inevitable Curious what you think a popping bubble looks like? A stock market crash and recession, where innocent bystanders lose their retirements? Or only AI speculators taking the brunt of the losses? Will Google, Meta, etc stop investing in AI because nobody uses it post-crash? Or will it be just as prevalent (or more) than today but with profits concentrated in the…

We've seen this before in 1983 and 2000. Many companies will fold, and those that don't will take a substantial hit. The public sentiment about "AI" will sour, but after that a new breed of more practical tools will emerge under different and more fairly marketed branding. I do think that the industry and this technology will survive, and we'll enjoy many good applications of it, but it will take a few more years of…

> Cities become clean and safe. Even in developing countries, poverty becomes a thing of the past, thanks to UBI and foreign aid.

The other things on that list seem fairly reasonable (if uncertain). Those last two not only depend on wide reaching political transformations in a specific direction but even then fail to account for lag time in the real world. If you started moving in the right direction in (say) 2027 it would presumably take many years to get there.

It's a weird mix of "already happening", "well yeah, obviously", and "clearly full of shit".

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#268

Post by fc417fc802 »

Terr_ wrote: post #246
filoeleven wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cool body mods are coming! The work at the Levin Lab ( https://drmichaellevin.org/ ) is making great progress in the basic science that supports this. They can make two-headed planaria, regenerate frog limbs, cure cancer in tadpoles; all via bioelectric communication with cellular networks. No gene editing. Levin believes this stuff will be very available to humans within the next 10 years, and has talked about h…

> cellular networks I often like to point out--satisfying a contrarian streak--that our original human equipment is literally the most mind-bogglingly complicated nanotechnology beyond our understanding, packed with dozens of incredible features we cannot imitate with circuits or chrome. So as much as I like the aesthetics of cyberpunk metal arms, keeping our OEM parts is better. If we need metal bodies at a construc…

At this point the biochemists have managed to create amino acid based structures that are stronger than the vast majority of building materials. Surely enhanced organic parts is the way to go?

I see no reason to expect that superwood is incompatible with in place biological synthesis from scratch. That's entirely organic and there's no question that its material properties far exceed those of our OEM specifications.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#269

Post by gdbsjjdn »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #228
gdbsjjdn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Customer Success so I have to screenshare with a decent number of engineers working for customers - startups and BigCos. The number of them who just blindly put shit into an AI prompt is incredible. I don't know if they were better engineers before LLMs? But I just watch them blindly pass flags that don't exist to CLIs and then throw their hands up. I can't imagine it's faster than a (non-LLM) Google search…

Reading this, I'm wondering if I'm suffering "Long Covid" I've recently had tons of memory and brain fog. I thought it was related to stress, and it's severe enough that I'm on medical leave from work right now My memory is absolutely terrible Do you know if it is possible to test or verify if it's COVID related?

I haven't had a lot of success so far in getting a diagnosis, there's a lot of different possible things that can be wrong. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is one place to start. I'm seeing an allergist about MCAS, I've had limited success taking antihistamines and anti-inflammatory drugs.

Mostly you talk to your doctor and read stuff and advocate for more testing to figure out why you're not able to function like before. Even if it's not "Long COVID" it definitely sounds like something is causing these problems and you should get it looked at.

Re: Bad Actors Are Grooming LLMs to Produce Falsehoods

#270

Post by EasyMark »

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 seems to be greedy actors vs bad actors currently. We'll see who comes out on top I suppose.
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