[contagiousflow]

Correct. They will never not have a social bias. Which leads to the question of, who controls these tools, and what biases are they okay/not okay with specifically training for. Currently they can be seen more as a reflection of broader culture (and even that has problems) but as we're already seeing with Grok they can be tuned at a whim to display any specific ideologies.

[tptacek]

Those are some of the questions it leads to, but there are other questions that situate agency outside of the labs and in the hands of users, like, what processes do you have set up to backstop automated decisionmaking?

It's not interesting to observe that Grok was successfully trained to be an edgelord; anybody paying attention knew that was easily achievable.

[contagiousflow]

> what processes do you have set up to backstop automated decisionmaking?

The companies releasing these models actively encourage the act of automated decision making by them. The entire value proposition is the automation of decisions and knowledge work. It's rare to find a use case for them that isn't offboarding your thinking and therefore agency

[tptacek]

The entire value proposition of the computer industry is the automation of decisions and knowledge work. We are and always have been in the business of automating away people's jobs.

[contagiousflow]

I reckon we agree more than we disagree, but there is a dichotomy of expansive and contractive technologies. Much of the computer industry has given more agency, choice, and knowledge to people.

[tptacek]

That's not in tension with the fact that computers have displaced enormous numbers of jobs. The pitch has always been that the displacement is accompanied by new opportunities elsewhere in the economy.