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When ChatGPT turns informant

futureofbeinghuman.com

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Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely coincidence. Myers-Briggs has no scientific validity and is the corporate equivalent of horoscopes in the newspaper . [1] When someone asks for your Myers-Briggs type, give them a zodiac sign. When someone asks for your zodiac sign, give them a Myers-Briggs type. ;) [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/myers-briggs-psychology...

> Myers-Briggs has no scientific validity Is this an accuracy versus precision problem? In my anecdotal experience, most people will consistently test near one’s Myers-Briggs type on different tests. It’s just that this test doesn’t translate well to the real-world situations it was pitched for.

> test near one’s Myers-Briggs type

He's saying that Myers-Briggs has no scientific basis. So if there's another test that does, you wouldn't be able to compare those results anyway.

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#62
post #33
post #17

I'm not sure I see how this is meaningfully different than the threat posed by a search engine. It's a very real threat, and I've always done my best to search from a browser context that isn't logged in as a result. But it's not a new threat, or something distinctive to AI.

Seriously, why is this always the first comment on HN? The formula never fails: 1. Criticism of anything related to AI 2. Comment: "I don't see how this is any different than phenomenon X that came before it". I have seen this by now maybe 400 times.

My personal favorite in this genre was the commenter who said that the heart-rate monitoring features of an Apple Watch were irrelevant because they could always check their own.

Scale & automation matter.

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#63
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess law enforcement can acquire all your chat logs from OpenAI OpenAI could also just voluntarily give it to the government. I'm trying to find ways to articulate these fears without sounding deep in hyperbole but it's undeniable that the current US government has authoritarian desires. When I look at all these services I'm forced to think "if push came to shove, would they stand up for my rights?", and I just…

sama is maga

No, he'll just do or say anything for more power and control, which I guess is the same thing. At least for the person at the top of MAGA.

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#64
post #44
post #17

I'm not sure I see how this is meaningfully different than the threat posed by a search engine. It's a very real threat, and I've always done my best to search from a browser context that isn't logged in as a result. But it's not a new threat, or something distinctive to AI.

Because you can't ask the search engine to summarize the views or thoughts or whatever, of the user. You have to scroll through them by the hundreds and see if any obvious nuggets stand out that you might be interested in. Yes, search engine history is private too and can reveal stuff you want to remain private. But you also need to see the browser history and the contents of those pages, together with the search his…

You might be surprised at the amount of people that interact with a search engine in the same way they do with an LLM. Especially now that many put an LLM widget at the top of results for queries like that.

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#65

At some point I got curious about how close ChatGPT would get to my Myers-Briggs profile based on my chats over the past year. It accurately got my type.. could be a coincidence of course, but I thought it was quite interesting. It also provided supporting evidence from the many types of different conversations we have had.

Likely coincidence. Myers-Briggs has no scientific validity and is the corporate equivalent of horoscopes in the newspaper . [1] When someone asks for your Myers-Briggs type, give them a zodiac sign. When someone asks for your zodiac sign, give them a Myers-Briggs type. ;) [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/myers-briggs-psychology...

[deleted]

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#66

At some point I got curious about how close ChatGPT would get to my Myers-Briggs profile based on my chats over the past year. It accurately got my type.. could be a coincidence of course, but I thought it was quite interesting. It also provided supporting evidence from the many types of different conversations we have had.

Likely coincidence. Myers-Briggs has no scientific validity and is the corporate equivalent of horoscopes in the newspaper . [1] When someone asks for your Myers-Briggs type, give them a zodiac sign. When someone asks for your zodiac sign, give them a Myers-Briggs type. ;) [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/myers-briggs-psychology...

Myers-Briggs is nearly astrology, but the tests are remarkably consistent because they basically poll your philosophy and self-image, and that changes slowly over your life (even if your view of yourself and other people is inaccurate, it's likely to stay inaccurate.)

As a data point, I learned about Myers-Briggs on the internet just like everyone else, and took tests on the internet for fun just like everyone else. Mentioned it to my dad during a casual conversation and asked him to guess what this stupid "online personality test" said about me, and he replied with my exact type. Turns out he had given it to me when I was around 10 years old (he was obsessed with metrics*), and 25 years later it was still the same (and not a common type.)

-----

[*] Fun fact: Allstate Insurance got their HR and training infiltrated by a Scientology consultancy, and they brought Hubbard's obsession with forcing cult members to produce more income for him to the organization for years before they were forced out. They accidentally turned my father who was transitioning from programming into HR into a completely unaware Scientologist when it came to demanding performance (which also gave him dumb ideas about child-rearing.)

Allstate Admits Training Was ‘Unacceptable’ : Insurance: Company hired consultant who taught Scientology management principles between 1988 and 1992.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-23-fi-46309-...

https://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/allstate2.html

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#67
post #42
post #17

I'm not sure I see how this is meaningfully different than the threat posed by a search engine. It's a very real threat, and I've always done my best to search from a browser context that isn't logged in as a result. But it's not a new threat, or something distinctive to AI.

> I've always done my best to search from a browser context that isn't logged in as a result. It isn't sufficient to avoid being logged in — you have to ensure that the search strings alone, grouped by IP address or some other signal, aren't enough to identify you. When AOL publicly released an archive with 20 million search strings in 2006, many users got exposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release…

Anonymized data is basically a smokescreen. With metadata points in the hundreds it is trivial to backtrack the origin of almost any information.

The only real anonymized data is no information kept at all.

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#69
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? You'd have a very, very good understanding of my political viewpoints from the log of my Google searches. I'm asking sincerely, not simply to push back on you.

Asking Google for details about January 6th is different than telling ChatGPT I think the election was stolen, and then arguing with it for hours about it. It would be harder to frame it in front of a jury that what you typed wasn't an accurate representation of what you were thinking and that you were being duplicitous to ChatGPT.

I don't think it really is in the circumstances we contemplate this threat in. In both the search engine case and the ChatGPT case, we're talking about circumstantial evidence (which, to be clear: is real and legally weighty in the US) --- particularly in the CBP setting that keeps coming up here, a Border Agent doesn't need the additional ChatGPT context you're talking about to draw an adverse conclusion!

I think at this point the fulcrum of the point I'm making is that people might be inadvertently lulling themselves into thinking they're revealing meaningfully less about themselves to Google than to ChatGPT. My claim would be that if there's a difference, it's not clear to me it's a material one.

Re: When ChatGPT turns informant

#70
post #42
post #17

I'm not sure I see how this is meaningfully different than the threat posed by a search engine. It's a very real threat, and I've always done my best to search from a browser context that isn't logged in as a result. But it's not a new threat, or something distinctive to AI.

> I've always done my best to search from a browser context that isn't logged in as a result. It isn't sufficient to avoid being logged in — you have to ensure that the search strings alone, grouped by IP address or some other signal, aren't enough to identify you. When AOL publicly released an archive with 20 million search strings in 2006, many users got exposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release…

Oh, I know, I'm just adding that detail to say that I'm not dismissive of the threat we're talking about. It's a real threat, I'm just saying it's an old one.
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