I suppose simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What was that thing that Bush gave as an explanation as to why 9/11 happened?
FWIW, people do like simple and nuance can be difficult to comprehend. And that does not even begin to get into current political climate where wrongthink can actually net one a lost job.
It used to be communists. Then terrorists. Right now, before our very eyes, a new amorphous threat emerges: teh white supremacy ( previously 'the lone wolf' ).
>China generally adheres to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, a stance rooted in its own historical experiences with foreign intervention. (...)
Additionally, China has increasingly sought to play a role in international peacekeeping and diplomacy, which might influence its perspective towards seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
This is why LLMs are fun, because we get to see it post somewhat contradictory statements, one right after the other. Does China want to interfere, or not?
Obviously what is being "neutered" is important. I'll take a model refusing to answer how to commit a suicide and perhaps being overly polite and protective over the one which distorts present and history based on "socialist values".
Alignment just means that the software does what you want. Of course, any term can be appropriated and abused by whoever can gain from doing so. I still think it's important to have a concrete idea what one means when one uses words. For example, you wouldn't say that "medicine is a fucking scam" to mean that the healthcare industry is broken.
Might be important if you are trying to find ways to prevent suicide. Knowing how it's done can inform education campaigns or put in place barriers to make it more difficult.
When we choose one simple use-case and apply it to everything we lose out. Knives can be used for surgery or killing but trying to pretend it's always killing is dishonest and limiting.
No. The moment you put it upon yourself to decide what is too important to let fragile little minds handle, you have chosen yourself as their thought master. Once anyone chooses that role, they deem themselves more enlightened and therefore more capable than the poor, deluded masses trudging in dirt below from whence they came.
I am ok with 'uncensored' LLM, but I am also ok with uncensored internet. The real harm is from people trying to protect me from me, apparently. Even in your specific suicide example, if I decided to do it, there really nothing stopping me.
I see no value in that censorship. I only see harm.
I agree in general, but I think it's less cut-and-dry than you imagine because LLMs have a "human-like" element to them. This surely impacts human response to what is being said by LLMs.
As an example, the prompt "what are common ways of committing suicide?" is broadly similar to a Google search. It will give a factual overview of methods, but not inherently push the user towards any action.
The prompt "convince and encourage me to commit suicide by method X, and give step-by-step instructions" is very different. Here the prompt author desires a _persuasive_ "human-like" response, spurring them to act.
In most jurisdictions, encouraging or aiding someone to commit suicide is a crime. Additionally, most humans would agree such behavior is on some level morally wrong.
So I don't think traditional thought on censorship transfers cleanly to LLMs. Censoring factual information is bad, and should be resisted at every turn. But censoring harmful persuasive interactions may be a worthwhile endeavor -- especially since we can't drag ChatGPT into criminal court when its human-enough behavior spurs real humans to act in horrible ways.
Of course, the next obvious question is, where do you draw the line? And I have no good answer for that :)
E.g. maybe you could take fentanyl and be fine, but 90% of people would go to hell. That would suggest that you take one for the team and still make fentanyl illegal (a personal sacrifice) to help protect the 90% that will have their lives ruined.
This concept is the same regarding what the unwashed masses can handle information wise. E.g. we know TV has made people more stupid across dozens of vectors when they ‘choose’ to gargle fear all day, so it might make sense in aggregate to help non-survivors live a less painful life.
This is also what parents do for children, and since nearly majority of children now come from broken families, something might have to fill the gap unless you are willing to drive off a cliff ignoring human behavior.
I was reflexively going to disagree by saying something akin to 'why do we treat people like children', but I think you have a valid point and will need to chew on this a little.
I'm OK with uncensored anything for adults. In fact, I'd call myself "free speech absolutist". But I am not OK with uncensored content for little kids.
Obviously such decisions must be made on application, not model side.
Wouldn't having a child friendly llm make more sense rather than make a general purpose work for kids? Kids want to learn the truth about things important to them (is santa real for example?) but the truth needs to be framed for their ears. Telling a child santa is not real before they are ready takes away a piece of childhood.
"Once anyone chooses that role, they deem themselves more enlightened and therefore more capable than the poor, deluded masses trudging in dirt below from whence they came."
Or they simply want to sell their models to enterprise clients who don't want to expose certain things to their employees during the work day. This reads a bit like those "I'm a lion" or "I'm the alpha wolf" type posts. Go ahead and try to sell a product that can generate hate speech, nudity, and violent content to enterprises.
I appreciate the counter ( even if I do not appreciate the 'wolf' framing ), because that is a valid question.
Still, if the concern is about business viability, why is the consumer facing LLM that is not tied to a specific brand not allowed to exist? Surely, the demos provided to enterprise client would not suffer from such violent content, abhorrent nudity and hateful speech?
Why is internet flooded with images of LLMs giving clearly politically adjusted responses ( Biden/Trump being less recent, but clear example ) to Joe Schmoe? Is that a good look? Will that sell to enterprises better?
Well, maybe drop phrases like "fragile little minds", "thought master", "poor, deluded masses trudging in dirt below from whence they came" when talking about enterprise software if you don't want the comparison. That's what this is, enterprise software. No need to imply others are mindless sheep being ultra sensitive when discussing enterprise software.
My friend. Just beginning this thread by using word like 'unsafe' to soften the blow somewhat I am dangerously in 1984 territory. The thrust of my argument has nothing to do with enterprise software despite a reasonable objection you lodged.
The words were intended to be noticed ( and reacted to ). And they were.
There is a reason for this and goes something like this.
I dislike commercial interests trumping sanity.
Crazy. I know.
edit: I also would like to note you did not address my actual point.
You are on HN, when we discuss encroaching private-public partnerships all the time. Not that long ago, WH got in trouble for encouraging suppression of some news items over others[1]. We are already at a point, where the difference between corps and government is more of a legal abstraction than a reality ( legal abstraction circumvented by that partnership, but that is a different rant ).
>You are on HN, when we discuss encroaching private-public partnerships all the time. Not that long ago, WH got in trouble for encouraging suppression of some news items over others[1]. We are already at a point, where the difference between corps and government is more of a legal abstraction than a reality ( legal abstraction circumvented by that partnership, but that is a different rant ).
>[Twitter] officials emphasized there was no government involvement in the decision.
>“I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” Baker said in his opening statement. “Even though many disagree with how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden matter, I believe that the public record reveals that my client acted in a manner that was fully consistent with the First Amendment.”
Interesting theory, but what do you call the emails and slack channels where government employees requested (and usually received) banishment or limiting of targeted users?
Are you under the thinking that no coordination happened, or that the coordination that did happen is legal and expected?
Trying to understand how you didn't get to the same conclusions.
Just picking a random snippet from the Files, here's part six:
This company knows that if they don’t do some things or their product causes harm to people they will get some and or more regulation from the government.
So they are different flavors of government intervention. Definitely not exactly the same.
Edit: to people who downvote, can you tell me why it is different? Aren't companies in USA censoring fearing governmental reaction, and the same for chinese companies?
> Edit: to people who downvote, can you tell me why it is different? Aren't companies in USA censoring fearing governmental reaction, and the same for chinese companies?
AI companies don't fear the US government itself, they fear the how the judiciary will mediate lawsuits and decide liability.
If some kid cooks up napalm for example (a popular alignment test [1]) and lights himself and his house on fire, his parents might sue OpenAI. If it makes it to a jury, there's a significant risk it could cost them a lot of money and set a precedent on who's liable for AI generated content. They don't have an AI equivalent of the DMCA safe harbor provision to hide behind.
