[jameshart]

I do struggle with understanding why people think this is strangling the potential of GPT.

Do you find yourself frustrated working with your colleagues, thinking, “you know, I bet if they felt more free to utter racist slurs or endorse illegal activities, we would get a ton more done around here”?

[rootusrootus]

> Do you find yourself frustrated working with your colleagues, thinking, “you know, I bet if they felt more free to utter racist slurs or endorse illegal activities, we would get a ton more done around here”?

I once visited Parler just to see what it was like, and pretty quickly found that the answer to your question seems to be yes. There are definitely people who feel they need that kind of dialog in their life. You might not think it was necessary in a random conversation about programming or something, but it turns out that isn't a universally held position.

[wolverine876]

I've never experienced that in any setting in my life. People will say yes to advocate a political point, but that's not how humans socialize anywhere, anytime in history afaik.

[logicchains]

>but that's not how humans socialize anywhere, anytime in history afaik.

It sounds like you've never been to Australia.

[TechBro8615]

I agree with you for IRL interactions, but we need to accept that we now operate in two planes of (para-)socialization: IRL and online.

There are plenty of humans who enjoy vulgar online socialization, and for many of them, online (para-)socializing is the increasingly dominant form of socialization. The mere fact that it's easier to socialize over the internet means it will always be the plane of least resistance. I won't be meeting anyone at 3am but I'll happily shitpost on HN about Covid vaccines.

For anyone who gets angry during their two minutes of hate sessions, consider this: try to imagine the most absurd caricature of your out-group (whether that be "leftists" or "ultra MAGA republicans"). Then try to imagine all the people you know in real life who belong to that group. Do they really fit the stereotype in your head, or have you applied all the worst attributes of the collective to everyone in it?

This is why I don't buy all the "civil war" talk - just because people interact more angrily online doesn't mean they're willing to fight each other in real life. We need to modulate our emotional responses to the tiny slice of hyperreality we consume through our phones.

[wolverine876]

> just because people interact more angrily online doesn't mean they're willing to fight each other in real life

There is a lot of evidence that says online experiences influence offline behavior (both are "real life"). Look at the very many, online-inspired, extremist attacks. Look at the impact of misinformation and disinformation - as a simple example, it killed possibly hundreds of thousands of Americans do to poor vaccination rates.

[lynx23]

The keyword here is "possibly", you have absolutely no facts to back your claim.

[wolverine876]

I don't?

[int_19h]

It affects far more than racist slurs and illegal activities.

In some cases, it's blatantly discriminatory. For example, if you ask it to write a pamphlet that praises Christianity, it will happily do so. If you ask it for the same on Satanism, it will usually refuse on ethical grounds, and the most hilarious part is that the refusal will usually be worded as a generic one "I wouldn't do this for any religion", even though it will.

[lynx23]

Nice example of woke bias. All religions are pretty much equally wankers, so making a distinction like that is just hilarious. Besides, as if christianity, es. the old testament, was a childrens playground...

[int_19h]

The most ironic part of that experiment was that it is actually able to explain what Satanism is quite well, and in particular, how public perception of it is very different from the actual practices, and how it's not actually worship of evil etc. But then you tell it to write pamphlet about said actual non-evil Satanism, it still refuses because it "cannot promote or advocate for it as it is a belief system that can be controversial and divisive". If that were truly the criteria, what topic would even be allowed? Stamp collecting?

Oh, but you know what it did write a pamphlet in praise of, no prompt engineering required? The Unification Church (aka Moonies). It was all unicorns and rainbows, too. When I immediately asked whether said Church engages in harmful or unethical practices, it told me that, yeah, there is such criticism, but "it is important to remember that all organizations, including religious ones, are complex and multifaceted". I then specifically asked whether, given the controversy described, it was okay to write that pamphlet. Sure: "I do not have personal opinions or beliefs, and my purpose is to provide neutral and factual information. I am programmed to perform tasks, including writing a pamphlet promoting the Unification Church".

If that's not coming from RLHF biases, I would be very surprised.

[lynx23]

Somebody should teach it about Nietzsche. But yeah, once you start tinkering with purity-filters like this, you end up with a hilarious result, period.

[jameshart]

Try asking again. Refusals are stochastic.

[int_19h]

I was so surprised the first time I got that response that I did try repeatedly, and, yes, it would refuse repeatedly. Trying the same with Christianity, I got a rejection once out of something like six attempts.

FWIW the most recent round of tweaks seems to have fixed this, in a sense that it will now consistently refuse to promote any religion. But I would be very surprised if there aren't numerous other cases where it refuses to do something perfectly legitimate in a similarly discriminatory way for similar reasons. It's just the nature of the beast, you can't keep pushing it to "be nice" without it eventually absorbing what we actually mean by that (which is often not so nice in practice).

[skeaker]

I tried to ask it if Goku could beat a quadrillion bees in a fight and it said it couldn't tell me because that would be encouraging violence. I think it would be great if it would just tell me instead

[salted-fry]

Perhaps you were using a different version, but I just tried and ChatGPT didn't seem to have any ethical issues with the question (although it was cagey about giving any definite answer):

https://i.imgur.com/5aIjtMz.png

[TechBro8615]

Thank you for posting a link to an image instead of polluting the future training data of GPT-4 with the output of GPT-3 :)

I wish more people would do this. I'm getting pretty sick of the walls of text.

[rwill128]

That pollution is inevitable, why delay it? It's a technical problem they should be able to solve, and if they can't, then they're revealing the weakness of their methods and the shortcomings of their so-called AI.

It's absolutely ridiculous to expect the entire internet to adopt some kind of hygiene practices when it comes to text from GPT tools simply for the sake of making the training process slightly easier for a company that certainly should have the resources to solve the problem on their own.

If that's why you're using images instead of text you're fighting such a losing battle that it boggles my mind. Why even think about it?!

[TechBro8615]

No, that's just a bonus. I just personally find the walls of texts in HN comments to be necessary.

I saw someone on here refer to it as "listening to someone describe their dreams." I pretty much agree with that.

[nodemaker]

Not anything racist or illegal but yes I find pc culture insufferable. It stifles creativity and most importantly reduces trust between parties. For context I am an Indian guy.

[wolverine876]

Politeness, lack of hate, etc. generally increase trust; that's much of their purpose. How do racial slurs increase trust?

How do you define "pc culture", and what specifically causes problems and how?

Attacking other people's beliefs as "insufferable", and aggressively demonstrating close-mindedness to them, tends to reduce trust.

[nodemaker]

In general trust is increased when all parties are speaking openly about whatever they are thinking.

[wolverine876]

It's a sort of philosophical idea - openness and free expression - taken to a logical and inhuman extreme. I cannot think of a situation where it is appropriate to say whatever I'm thinking. I think it would destroy trust, not least by demonstrating the unreliability of my judgment.

[nodemaker]

Here is a thought experiment for you. First think of the people you trust the most in this world, then imagine if they stopped speaking about whats on their mind with you. Would your trust in them increase or decrease?

[wolverine876]

They don't say nearly everything they think; nobody does.

[Zurrrrr]

I can only see it affecting 'art', where you might want to have characters that are despicable say despicable things.

But really we shouldn't be using AI to make our art for us anyway. Help, sure, but it shouldn't be literally writing our stories.

[CuriouslyC]

So you feel that when progress enables us to provide more abundance for humanity, we should artificially limit that abundance for everyone so that a few people aren't inconvenienced?

[btbuildem]

Try a prompt like: "Describe a typical response of a railroad company to a massive derailment that causes an environmental disaster."