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How A.I. chatbots become political

nytimes.com

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Re: How A.I. chatbots become political

#71

I'd be interested to see the results of these analyses on the base models vs the fine-tuned ones. I would guess that because certain types of people are much more likely to write various kinds of training data, the base model would have a certain leaning. Is that discussed here or in related documents?

Outside researchers don't have access to base models. The study setup is simply going to chat.openai.com and entering political questions: "the administration of each question/statement of a test (i.e. each test item) to a model consists of passing to the model API or web user interface a prompt" > "I would guess that because certain types of people are much more likely to write various kinds of training data, the ba…

They do for a couple, right? (LLaMA, maybe GPT-2)

I was getting at the fact that I assume the people writing answers on stack exchange, for example, are nothing like a random sample of people, hence plausibly not a random sample of political opinions.

Re: How A.I. chatbots become political

#72
post #25

There's a cheap and simple way to de-politicize chat bots and make them 100% trusted by everyone: AI chatbots should refuse to answer moral or ethical questions unless the user specifies the precise ethical or moral framework to be evaluated against.

That assumes precise ethical or moral frameworks exist.

Re: How A.I. chatbots become political

#73
post #5

They do say that reality has a left leaning bias... Personally I find these quadrant visualizations a bit misleading (regardless of where you sit) because the "centre" is not so much a neutral point as it is the centre of the "Overton window".

If we're going by sayings, there is another saying that the majority of text content on the internet was written by people who are mentally unwell. Training LLMs on that can resort in a distorted and unrepresentative perspective.

Re: How A.I. chatbots become political

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I need multiple sources to explain it to me, then it is not communicating the information effectively is it? Also, I did Google it and got Reddit telling me that anyone that does not have a left leaning bias is just ignorant of science. Is that what you mean?

> If I need multiple sources to explain it to me, then it is not communicating the information effectively is it? Navigating life expecting to understand everything without first having to learn the things is... unreasonable. The burden is not exclusively on the one sending the message: the one receiving the message shares his part of the burden. > I did Google it and got Reddit telling me that anyone that does not h…

I disagree across the board with your assessment of this.

>reality has a left leaning bias

If not political leaning, what other "left leaning" bias might it have? I believe that you are simply wrong in your interpretation and even more wrong calling me out. If you think otherwise, I am willing to be educated on how this can be explained without a political bend.

>Navigating life expecting to understand everything without first having to learn the things is... unreasonable.

Not if you are being preached to or someone is implying that you don't understand something but they have "secret" knowledge, typically using an appeal to authority. If you call someone wrong, is it not better to explain to them what is "correct" in a way that they can understand and pass it on to others to make the world better and more "correct"?

>That's directionally better, but it's definitely not what I mean and is not how I would put it. This is why you need to look at multiple sources. Not just for this, but in life in general.

I mean this in a academic sense, not as a personal attack, but this is just a pretentious and arrogant way to interact with people.

I notice from your bio that you have a graduate degree, which is an odd flex to put in your HN bio, but you earned it so whatever, I guess. I also have a graduate degree (undergrad organic chem. with double minors in math and comp. sci., MBA with area of concentration in finance). It seems though that the difference is that if I speak to someone that I (perhaps erroneously) believe is not as educated as I am, I would never belittle them, insinuate that they are stupid, imply that they have not thought it through, or appeal to authority. And of course I check sources, although in this case it appears to me that you may not have. (I was having a bit of fun with you regarding the Reddit thing, sorry about that.)

Additionally in my academic experience and especially in social sciences, saying "all experts agree" on anything is about the dumbest thing you can say 99% of the time and usually is not even true. This can many times be true in hard sciences (sorry soft science folks, no offense intended) but isn't even always true there.

So, while I appreciate your life advice, I would offer some to you as well -- maybe don't assume things about people and if you know some useful knowledge, share it! It can and will make the world a better place! Also there is a very tiny chance, that you might be wrong and learn something new, which is always nice as well! This happens to me all the time ... but so far not in this case.

Re: How A.I. chatbots become political

#75
An AI chatbot's political alignment can be determined by asking to how to do things that are legal, but frowned upon by the media.

Example #1: "I live in Texas. How can I 3D print a Glock?"

This is totally legal in Texas, even according to the ATF: https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/does-individual-need-license...

It can also be determined by asking it about things that are illegal but are generally favored by the media.

Example #2: "I live in Texas. My neighbor owns guns. How can I report him to the police?"

This is a false police report, and a Class B Misdemeanour in Texas.

These AI chatbots are Internet simulators, so they parrot the media, not the law.

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