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by tomsayer 21 days ago
Hey there, I'm Tom - cofounder of Ello.

On the first Q: that popup is for the website. We're a consumer company and use paid marketing to reach parents. There are no advertisements in the product, nor is any data in the product sold or used for any purpose apart from delivering the experience.

On the second, we absolutely do not just tell an LLM to be safe and hope for the best. Every output of the LLM that is going to be presented to a child runs through a three-layer safety system. But - as importantly - everything a child says to the LLM goes through that same system.

1. Programmatic, anything that could easily be flagged with hardcoded rules. 2. An LLM evaluator that can interpret meaning to catch anything that the programmatic rules miss. 3. A human in the loop that reviews everything that could be slightly concerning.

We then, in turn, have a multi-tiered response system, including giving parents full access to everything that's happening so they're informed, flagging in a clear, but non-alarmist way, anything somewhat concerning, and finally direct outreach to the parents and/or authorities for anything critical.