61–70 of 87 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're the "majority" by virtue of internationally gerrymandered borders. In the region as a whole? Yes, we're an indigenous minority.
The Boers are an indigenous minority in southern Africa, but in the 80s I wouldn't have used the Boers as an example of people who really understand the experience of bias as a minority.
Interesting post. I find myself moving away from the sort of "compare/contrast with humans" mode and more "let's figure out exactly what this machine _is_" way of thinking. If we look back at the history of mechanical machines, we see a lot of the same kind of debates happening there that we do around AI today -- comparing them to the abilities of humans or animals, arguing that "sure, this machine can do X, but huma…
I believe that this is dangerous in many valuable applications, and will mean that the current generation of LLM's will be more limited in value that some people believe. I think this is quite similar to the problems that self driving cars have; we can make good ones for sure, but they are not good enough or predictable enough to be trusted and used without significant constraints.
My worry is that LLM's will get used inappropriately and will hurt lots of people, I wonder if there is a way to stop this?
The dismissal of biases and stereotypes is exactly why AI research needs more people who are part of the minority. Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much. It's easy to say "Oh well, humans are biased too" when the biases of these machines don't: misgender you, mistranslate text that relates to you, have negative affect toward you, are more likely to write violent stories related to you, have lo…
I'll take an example. I'm making an adventure/strategy game that is set in the 90s Finland. We had a lot of Somali refugees coming from the Soviet Union back then and to reflect that I've created a female Somali character who is unable to find employment due to the racist attitudes of the time.
I'm using DALL-E 2 to create some template graphics for the game and using the prompt "somali middle aged female pixel art with hijab" produces some real monstrosities https://imgur.com/a/1o2CEi9 whereas "nordic female middle age minister short dark hair pixel art portrait pixelated smiling glasses" produces exclusively decent results https://imgur.com/a/ag2ifqi .
I'm an extremely privileged white, middle-aged, straight cis male and I'm able to point out a problem. Of course I'm not against hiring minorities, just saying that you don't need to belong to any minority group to spot the biases.
Interesting post. I find myself moving away from the sort of "compare/contrast with humans" mode and more "let's figure out exactly what this machine _is_" way of thinking. If we look back at the history of mechanical machines, we see a lot of the same kind of debates happening there that we do around AI today -- comparing them to the abilities of humans or animals, arguing that "sure, this machine can do X, but huma…
I think ChatGPT is a Chinese Room (as per John Searle's famous description). The problem with this is that ChatGPT has no idea what it is saying and doesn't/can't understand when it is wrong or uncertain (or even when it is right or certain). I believe that this is dangerous in many valuable applications, and will mean that the current generation of LLM's will be more limited in value that some people believe. I thin…
It’s just a tool
Interesting post. I find myself moving away from the sort of "compare/contrast with humans" mode and more "let's figure out exactly what this machine _is_" way of thinking. If we look back at the history of mechanical machines, we see a lot of the same kind of debates happening there that we do around AI today -- comparing them to the abilities of humans or animals, arguing that "sure, this machine can do X, but huma…
Conversely, these models open up philosophical questions of "exactly what a human is" beyond language abilities. How much of what we think, do, and perceive comes from the use of language?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think ChatGPT is a Chinese Room (as per John Searle's famous description). The problem with this is that ChatGPT has no idea what it is saying and doesn't/can't understand when it is wrong or uncertain (or even when it is right or certain). I believe that this is dangerous in many valuable applications, and will mean that the current generation of LLM's will be more limited in value that some people believe. I thin…
We stop this like any other issue with the law. Somebody is going to use LLM and cause harm. They will then get sued and people will have to reconsider the risk of using LLM. It’s just a tool
I don't know what just a tool is supposed to mean. Pistols and nuclear warheads are also tools, they're tools for killing people.
I cannot understand where the boundary between some of the "common-yet-boring arguments" and "real limitations" is. E.g., the ideas that "You cannot learn anything meaningful based only on form" and "It only connects pieces its seen before according to some statistics" are "boring", but the fact that models have no knowledge of knowledge, or knowledge of time, or any understanding of how texts relate to each other is…
Actually, they struggle even with haikus if you care about proper syllable counts.
The dismissal of biases and stereotypes is exactly why AI research needs more people who are part of the minority. Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much. It's easy to say "Oh well, humans are biased too" when the biases of these machines don't: misgender you, mistranslate text that relates to you, have negative affect toward you, are more likely to write violent stories related to you, have lo…
Interesting post. I find myself moving away from the sort of "compare/contrast with humans" mode and more "let's figure out exactly what this machine _is_" way of thinking. If we look back at the history of mechanical machines, we see a lot of the same kind of debates happening there that we do around AI today -- comparing them to the abilities of humans or animals, arguing that "sure, this machine can do X, but huma…
Conversely, these models open up philosophical questions of "exactly what a human is" beyond language abilities. How much of what we think, do, and perceive comes from the use of language?
Language models feed from the same source. They carry as much claim to intelligence, it's the same intelligence. What makes language models inferior today is the lack of access to feedback signals. They are not embodied, embedded and enacted in the environment (the 4 E's). They don't even have a code execution engine to iterate on bugs. But they could have.
And when a models does have access to massive experimentation, search and can learn from its outcomes, like AlphaGo, then it can beat us at our own game. Trained just in self-play mode, learning from verifying outcomes, was enough to surpass two thousand years of history, all of our players put together.
I think future code generation models will surpass human level based on massive problem solving experience, and most of it will be generated by its previous version. A human could not experience as much in a lifetime.
This is the second source of intelligence - experience. For language models it only costs money to generate, it's not a matter of getting more human data. So the path is wide open now. Who has the money to crank out millions of questions, problems and tasks + their solutions?
Sometimes I read text like this and really enjoy the deep insights and arguments once I filter out the emotion, attitude, or tone. And I wonder if the core of what they're trying to communicate would be better or more efficiently received if the text was more neutral or positive. E.g. you can be 'bearish' on something and point out 'limitations', or you can say 'this is where I think we are' and 'this is how I think…
Instead of an argument about "tone," it's always going to be better to be specific about your objection. In my experience, nine times out of ten when asked to be specific, the "tone" problem turns out to be that the author said something "is wrong," and the reviewer is pretending that a horrible mistake has been made by not instead saying "I think it could be wrong," or "this is how I think that this thing might be improved."
Nobody should be required to prefix the things they are saying they believe with the fact that those things are their opinions. Who else's opinions would they be? Also, nobody should be required to describe what they think in a way that compliments and builds on things that they think are wrong. It's up to those people to make their arguments themselves. There is no obligation to try to fix things that you actually just want to replace.
Contrary to what you say here, I don't think those behaviors make anyone more receptive to one's arguments, because those objections are actually vacuous rhetorical distractions from actual disagreements (whether something is true or false) that can be argued on their merits if there are merits to argue. In fact, I think those behaviors indicate an eagerness to reduce conflict that will only be taken advantage of by someone objecting to "tone" in bad faith. If you've said "I think that this method would improve the process," there's really no reason that a "tone"-arguer can't be upset that you said that it "would" improve the process instead of "could" improve the process. In fact, it's an act of presumptuous elitism that you think you could improve the process, and it disrespects the many very well-regarded researchers involved to state as a fact that you could see something that they haven't.
Sorry for the rant, but I think that arguments about "tone" or whether something is "just your opinion, man" are far worse internet pollution than advertising, and I get triggered.