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Copilot AI calls journalist a child abuser, Microsoft tries to launder responsibility (pivot-to-ai.com)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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[-] MagicShel@programming.dev -5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

No. Predicting words is barely related to facts. I'll defend AI as an occasionally useful tool, but nothing it ever says should be taken as fact without confirmation. Sometimes that confirmation can be experimental — does this recipe taste good? Sometimes you need expert supervision to say this part was translated wrong or this code won't work because of xyz. Sometimes you have to go out and look it up.

I like AI but there is a real problem treating it like the output means anything. It might give you a direction to look closer at, but it can never be the endpoint. We'd be better off not trying to censor it, but understanding it will bullshit you without blinking.

I summarize all of that by saying AI is a useful tool, but a terrible product.

[-] self@awful.systems 10 points 4 months ago

We’d be better off not trying to censor it

this claim keeps getting brought up and every time it doesn’t seem to mean a damn thing, particularly since no, censoring the output of an LLM doesn’t do anything to its ability to predict text. censoring its training set would, but seeing as the topic of this thread is a fact an LLM fabricated by being just a dumb text predictor — there’s no real way to censor the training set to prevent this, LLMs are just shitty.

I summarize all of that by saying AI is a useful tool

trying to find a use case for this horseshit has broken your brain into thinking these worthless tools would have value if only they weren’t “being censored” or whatever cope you gleaned from the twitter e/accs

[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 7 points 4 months ago

We’d be better off not trying to censor it

Those mfs would refuse to change their code when it fails a test because it restricts their freedom of expression and censors their outputs to conform to the mainstream notion of "correct"

[-] self@awful.systems 11 points 4 months ago

type systems are censorship. proof assistants? how dare you imply I would need to prove anything

…fuck, I’m flashing back to the one time a Verilog developer told me formal verification wasn’t real because mathematicians don’t understand engineering

[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 10 points 4 months ago

type systems are censorship

You jest but trying to convince C people to just use Rust please god fuck stop hurting yourself and us all kinda feels like this

[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 7 points 4 months ago

You're dodging the question. How do you evaluate if it's good at predicting words? How do you evaluate if a change made it better or worse?

this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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