[DGoettlich]

fully understand you. we'd like to provide access but also guard against misrepresentations of our projects goals by pointing to e.g. racist generations. if you have thoughts on how we should do that, perhaps you could reach out at [e-mail] ? thanks in advance!

[myrmidon]

What is your worst-case scenario here?

Something like a pop-sci article along the lines of "Mad scientists create racist, imperialistic AI"?

I honestly don't see publication of the weights as a relevant risk factor, because sensationalist misrepresentation is trivially possible with the given example responses alone.

I don't think such pseudo-malicious misrepresentation of scientific research can be reliably prevented anyway, and the disclaimers make your stance very clear.

On the other hand, publishing weights might lead to interesting insights from others tinkering with the models. A good example for this would be the published word prevalence data (M. Brysbaert et al @Ghent University) that led to interesting follow-ups like this: https://observablehq.com/@yurivish/words

I hope you can get the models out in some form, would be a waste not to, but congratulations on a fascinating project regardless!

[schlauerfox]

It seems like if there is an obvious misuse of a tool, one has a moral imperative to restrict use of the tool.

[timschmidt]

Every tool can be misused. Hammers are as good for bashing heads as building houses. Restricting hammers would be silly and counterproductive.

[adaml_623]

Yes but if you are building an voice activated autonomous flying hammer then you either want it to be very good at differentiating heads from hammers OR you should restrict its use.

[timschmidt]

OR you respect individual liberty and agency, hold individuals responsible for their actions, instead of tools, and avoid becoming everyone's condescending nanny.

Your pre-judgement of acceptable hammer uses would rob hammer owners of responsible and justified self-defense and defense of others in situations in which there are no other options, as well as other legally and socially accepted uses which do not fit your pre-conceived ideas.

[superxpro12]

Perhaps you could detect these... "dated"... conclusions and prepend a warning to the responses? IDK.

I think the uncensored response is still valuable, with context. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" sort of thing.

[bondarchuk]

You can guard against misrepresentations of your goals by stating your goals clearly, which you already do. Any further misrepresentation is going to be either malicious or idiotic, a university should simply be able to deal with that.

Edit: just thought of a practical step you can take: host it somewhere else than github. If there's ever going to be a backlash the microsoft moderators might not take too kindly to the stuff about e.g. homosexuality, no matter how academic.