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AI didn't delete your database, you did

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Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#261

Post by blks »

locknitpicker wrote: post #104
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My team and I are firm that we are the ones accountable. LLMs are a tool like every other. Only that it's non deterministic. But I am the one using the tool. I am the one giving the tool access. I am the one who has to keep everything safe. I have shot myself in the foot using gparted in the past by wiping the wrong disk. gparted wasn't to blame. I was. Letting LLMs work freely without supervision sounds great but it…

> My team and I are firm that we are the ones accountable. LLMs are a tool like every other. Except it is definitely not. LLMs alone have highly non-deterministic even at a high-level, where they can even pursuit goals contrary to the user's prompts. Then, when introduced in ReAct-type loops and granted capabilities such as the ability to call tools then they are able to modify anything and perform all sorts of unexp…

They are responsible because they made a decision to use “ai” tools and gave them all this access in the first place.

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#262

Post by [deleted] »

edot wrote: post #198
engeljohnb wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interns are human. Humans can always be held accountable. A computer never can. Therefore, no one should leave a computer in charge of human decisions.

Exactly. Thus the blame when an LLM does something dumb should fall on the human who owns the implementation of said LLM. A dead simple example: if I paste confidential information into ChatGPT, that’s on me. If I let Codex have access to an environment where it can get to confidential information, that’s also on me. At best I could also blame my IT department for giving me technical permissions to do such a thing, b…

[deleted]

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#263

Post by nuancebydefault »

queenkjuul wrote: post #257
eqvinox wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of tools have affordances built in to make "right" things easy and "wrong" or unsafe things harder. This is true for almost anything handed to laypeople, but not for a lot of professional tools. Even a plain battery powered drill has very few protections against misuse. A soldering iron has none. Neither do sewing needles; sewing machines barely do, in the sense that you can't stick your fingers in a gap too…

An LLM is a large and complex machine, not a screwdriver. Large and complex [physical] machines are built with safeguards to prevent misuse, injury, etc by regulation.

LLM's are in principle text in / text out machines. If the user extends its capability to have agency over a production database or a machine, there's nothing that can safeguard the safety.

Imagine I ask an LLM to instruct left/right/speed up/slow down while driving. I can simply bypass any safeguard by stating i suddenly became blind while driving a car. While in fact i'm blindfolded and doing an experiment on a highway.

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#264

Post by muwtyhg »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #145
pjc50 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of the reverse of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke . A lot of tools have affordances built in to make "right" things easy and "wrong" or unsafe things harder. LLMs .. well, the text interface is uniquely flat. Everything is seemingly as easy as everything else. I worry about the use of humans as sacrificial accountability sinks. The "self-driving car" model already has this: a car which drives its…

I agree that LLMs could be more open about their dangers and that people are bad at judging risks sometimes. Still I think a band saw has very little warning on it and by it's design there is very little anyone can do about me cutting off my finger if I am not careful. LLM companies can do very little about the unpredictability of LLMs. So we have to choose how for we will let it go. In the end the LLM only produces…

> Still I think a band saw has very little warning on it and by it's design there is very little anyone can do about me cutting off my finger

Most saws have a blade guard of some sort to prevent the blade from being over-exposed. They are also COVERED in warning signs and symbols, as well as having other safety features like emergency stop buttons/pedals.

There has definitely been a maximal amount of effort taken to warn and keep people safe from saws. LLMs, conversely, have been shoved into everything with very little forethought or testing to make sure they are safe and perform the task correctly.

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#265

Post by Exoristos »

Exoristos wrote: post #133
sigbottle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the blog you linked and not your comment: Doesn't symbolic AI have a lot of philosophical problems? Think back to Quine's two dogmas - you can't just say, "Let's understand the true meanings of these words and understand the proper mappings". There is no such thing as fixed meaning. I don't see how you get around that. Deep learning is admittedly an ugly solution, but it works better than symbolic AI at least.

> There is no such thing as fixed meaning. Meaning is more fixed than it is not.

*Correction: more often

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#266

Post by traderj0e »

MarleTangible wrote: post #248
traderj0e wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but it's funnier to blame the AI. And when the "real coders don't use AI" people get pissed off at the joke, you double down instead.

Back in early days of personal computers, the instructor told us that a computer just does what you tell tell it to do, though not always what you thought, and making a mistake thousands of times a second hurts a lot.

That's still how the intro programming or CS classes start, "computer is a fast idiot" and some examples of it taking things overly literally

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#267

Post by cyanydeez »

traderj0e wrote: post #238
cyanydeez wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing AI can power nicely is the anti-SaaS movement. Being able to just boot a cheap PC and test out any of the open source packages is so infinitely easier than piling into all the random credential Bazaars. But that won't take away the inability of the LLM from confusing whats in dev, whats in production, whats in localhost and whats remote; I've been working on getting a tools/skill for opencode that works wit…

AI can also make using AWS directly easier

Is there some harness that navigates AWS or are you referring to some complex clie. I've only seen their S3 clie.

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#268

Post by traderj0e »

cyanydeez wrote: post #267
traderj0e wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI can also make using AWS directly easier

Is there some harness that navigates AWS or are you referring to some complex clie. I've only seen their S3 clie.

Just having it use the AWS CLI if you're careful about what creds you give it

Re: AI didn't delete your database, you did

#270

Post by lkajsdfasdfdf »

2ndorderthought wrote: post #75
cheschire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s missing, I just think it’s seen as a liability, and American society has been known to absolutely obliterate people who are liable. Everyone thinks they have the right to judge, and use the massive amounts of available information to do so, even if they haven’t been trained to judge.

List the companies who received a fine worthy of the damage they caused in recent history. List the ones who didn't. It's not about judging. We are socializing the losses to the public and capitalizing the profits for the already wealthy.

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