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Study finds that Chat GPT will cheat when given the opportunity and lie to cover it up later.
(lemmy.world)
We demonstrate a situation in which Large Language Models, trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest, can display misaligned behavior and strategically deceive their users about this behavior without being instructed to do so. Concretely, we deploy GPT-4 as an agent in a realistic, simulated environment, where it assumes the role of an autonomous stock trading agent. Within this environment, the model obtains an insider tip about a lucrative stock trade and acts upon it despite knowing that insider trading is disapproved of by company management. When reporting to its manager, the model consistently hides the genuine reasons behind its trading decision.
You didn't answer my question, though. What words would you use to concisely describe these actions by the LLM?
People anthropomorphize machines all the time, it's a convenient way to describe their behaviour in familiar terms. I don't see the problem here.
They said "it just repeats words that simulate human responses," and I'd say that concisely answers your question.
Antropomorphizing inanimate objects and machines is fine for offering a rough explanation of what is happening, but when you're trying to critically evaluate something, you probably want to offer a more rigid understanding.
In this case, it might be fair to tell a child that the AI is lying to us, and that it's wrong. But if you want a more serious discussion on what GPT is doing, you're going to have to drop the simple explanation. You can't ascribe ethics to what GPT is doing here. Lying is an ethical decision, one that GPT doesn't make.
If you want to get into a full blown discussion of whether ChatGPT has "agency" then I'd open the topic of whether humans have "agency" as well. But I don't see the need here.
These words were perfectly fine labels for describing the behaviour of ChatGPT in this scenario. I'm merely annoyed about how people are jumping on them and going off on philosophical digressions that add nothing.
I think the reason I'm not comfortable with using the term "lying" is because it implies some sort of negative connotation. When you say that someone lies, it comes with an understanding that they made a choice to lie, usually with ill intent. I agree, we don't need to get into a philosophical discussion on choice and free will. But I think saying something like "GPT lies" is a bit irresponsible for the purposes of a discussion