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Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

updates.techforpalestine.org

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Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#41

Post by kazinator »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #38
kazinator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it premeditated weaponization of sexual violence as a tool of war? The comment you replying to is not denying that it happened. What if the weaponization accusation is just an embellishment added to suit a political narrative? Establishing its truth does require evidence, separately from the evidence of the violence itself. That's even if we happened to find the narrative morally prevailing.

I have no idea what difference it makes if the rape was premeditated. The strategy employed by Hamas was to terrorize. You think Gaza should be invaded less harshly because her soldiers decided to rape in the heat of the moment?

The difference it makes is that if it is a strategy, it comes down from higher command, and isn't merely individual misconduct.

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#42

Post by xg15 »

No matter the views on the whole issue, I find it quite bold, but also risky to start such a project in the US. At the core of it, this is still an armed conflict, that the US is actively involved in. (for much of the conflict's ~140 year history but especially the last ~70 years)

So I'd expect an US-based incubator or startup with an explicit pro-palestine agenda to be at risk of getting into legal hot water very quickly if they don't commit themselves to purely civilian and nonviolent projects.

All the projects that are currently listed on the page fulfill that condition, but I don't see how that incubator's stance towards projects with a military significance or "dual use" potential would be.

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#44

Post by az09mugen »

aguaviva wrote: post #11
Imnimo wrote: post #6

I am very skeptical that something like "An LLM-based chatbot that answers history and law questions about palestine in a hasbara free way" is going to materially help anyone.

Sure it can, as can any other kind of well-designed Q+A bot, even about far less controversial topics. The material benefit as such resides in the fact that (1) they can potentially save users a great deal of time (a very large portion of search engine queries are straight-up questions, which the articles in the result set sometimes answer, but usually only partially, and it still requires a good chunk of time to plo…

I strongly disagree on the LLM-based bot helping on any controversial topic. LLMs _will_ hallucinate no matter what you do. They will do the exact opposite by providing a few false/hallucinated informations in a context where you need truth and exactitude.

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#45

Post by pvg »

j_maffe wrote: post #33
pvg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some users flag, others vouch, that's a disagreement rather than abuse in some obvious way.

Yes, but again see my previous comment about the asymmetry of visibility.

There are lots of such asymmetries (although yours isn't very accurate since posts don't get hidden the moment they are flagged) but however the system is tuned, it's still not evidence of abuse. People disagree on what stories belong where and the system may work differently than the way you prefer or assume but neither of these are evidence of abuse. That's not saying there isn't abuse it's just not clear how you reach that.

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#46

Post by j_maffe »

pvg wrote: post #45
j_maffe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but again see my previous comment about the asymmetry of visibility.

There are lots of such asymmetries (although yours isn't very accurate since posts don't get hidden the moment they are flagged) but however the system is tuned, it's still not evidence of abuse. People disagree on what stories belong where and the system may work differently than the way you prefer or assume but neither of these are evidence of abuse. That's not saying there isn't abuse it's just not clear how you r…

Yeah, you're right, it's not evidence of abuse. I just find the designed system is vulnerable to it. Whether that's the case would require more data.

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#47

Post by aguaviva »

az09mugen wrote: post #44
aguaviva wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it can, as can any other kind of well-designed Q+A bot, even about far less controversial topics. The material benefit as such resides in the fact that (1) they can potentially save users a great deal of time (a very large portion of search engine queries are straight-up questions, which the articles in the result set sometimes answer, but usually only partially, and it still requires a good chunk of time to plo…

I strongly disagree on the LLM-based bot helping on any controversial topic. LLMs _will_ hallucinate no matter what you do. They will do the exact opposite by providing a few false/hallucinated informations in a context where you need truth and exactitude.

LLMs _will_ hallucinate no matter what you do.

I think you're overthinking it. This is like saying LLMs will never be useful because they hallucinate. That's a known issue, and yet of course they have been proven to be often quite useful nonetheless.

What it comes down to is, how often do they hallucinate, what's the negative impact when they do (both of which can be measured) and very importantly: for whatever their measured performance is, how does it compare to the next best alternative that users have?

It's not like they're trying to build a model to design a nuclear reactor in one go. It's just a Q+A bot, whose performance can be easily measured by benchmarking it against the top 30 questions or so in a given subject area (probably accounting for 95 percent of all inputs). And the current alternative users have (search engines) is pretty darn mediocre.

BTW I'm actually not much of a fan of LLMs or chatbots, so I have nothing to "sell" you here. But this is my rough take, based on my generally quite skeptical attitude toward this technology.

Which does seem to suggest that, at the very least, it's an idea worth exploring.

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#48

Post by az09mugen »

aguaviva wrote: post #47
az09mugen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree on the LLM-based bot helping on any controversial topic. LLMs _will_ hallucinate no matter what you do. They will do the exact opposite by providing a few false/hallucinated informations in a context where you need truth and exactitude.

LLMs _will_ hallucinate no matter what you do. I think you're overthinking it. This is like saying LLMs will never be useful because they hallucinate. That's a known issue, and yet of course they have been proven to be often quite useful nonetheless. What it comes down to is, how often do they hallucinate, what's the negative impact when they do (both of which can be measured) and very importantly: for whatever their…

I'm not overthinking it, some papers describe it [0] and [1] for example. I agree for some subjects you can deal with some error.

The problem is not how often but how bad just one single error can be. My point was on controversial topic, where a single error can deal serious damage. Yes it must be error-free like for a nuclear reactor. Just imagine a Q&A chatbot answering questions on the subject of Israel and Palestine or something else really touchy, do you really think you can afford any error/hallucination ?

[0] : https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.05746 [1] : https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11817

Re: Announcing the Tech for Palestine Incubator

#49

Post by aguaviva »

az09mugen wrote: post #48
aguaviva wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs _will_ hallucinate no matter what you do. I think you're overthinking it. This is like saying LLMs will never be useful because they hallucinate. That's a known issue, and yet of course they have been proven to be often quite useful nonetheless. What it comes down to is, how often do they hallucinate, what's the negative impact when they do (both of which can be measured) and very importantly: for whatever their…

I'm not overthinking it, some papers describe it [0] and [1] for example. I agree for some subjects you can deal with some error. The problem is not how often but how bad just one single error can be. My point was on controversial topic, where a single error can deal serious damage. Yes it must be error-free like for a nuclear reactor. Just imagine a Q&A chatbot answering questions on the subject of Israel and Palest…

You are indeed overthinking, because I just said, very clearly, that I acknowledged the hallucination problem, and yet you're throwing citations back as if I never heard of it. How many times does one have to say "it's a known issue"?

My point was on controversial topic, where a single error can deal serious damage.

Okay, but so can a single garbage article on a search engine result. I guess one shouldn't build search engines then (unless they can be held to the same standards as nuclear reactors), because do you think we can afford even single bad result? Just imagine what will happen, etc.

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