Elon Musk's AI assistant Grok boasted that the billionaire had the "potential to drink piss better than any human in history," among other absurd claims.
Yes, it’s clear that some of this may have to do with the fact that even if cloud LLMs have live browsing capabilities, they often still rely on outdated information from their training data. I am simply describing my impressions from somewhat extensive use of cloud LLMs.
I don’t have a list of examples, but in my comment above I have mentioned two that I find suspicious.
I simply think that these products should be used with skepticism as a matter of principle. This is simply because none of the companies that offer them are known for ethical behavior - quite the opposite.
In the case of Google, for example, I don’t think it will be too long before (public) advertising opportunities are implemented in Gemeni, because Google’s business model is essentially the advertising business. The other cloud LLMs are also products of purely profit-oriented companies—and manipulating public opinion is a multi-billion dollar business that they will certainly not want to miss out on. Social media platforms have demonstrated this in the past as has Google and others with their “classic” search engines, targeting and data selling schemes. Whether this raises ethical issues is likely to be of little concern to these companies as their only concern is profit.
The simple fact is that it is completely unclear what logic the providers use to regulate the output. It is equally unclear what criteria are used to select training data (here, too, the output can already be influenced by deliberately omitting certain information).
What I am getting at is that it can be assumed that all providers are interested in maximizing profits—and it is therefore likely that they will allow themselves to be paid to specifically promote certain topics, products, or even worldviews, or to withhold information that is unwelcome to wealthy interest groups.
As a regular user of cloud LLMs, I have the impression that this is already happening. I cannot prove this tho, as it would require systematic, scientific studies to demonstrate whether and to what effects manipulation occurs. Unfortunately, I do not know whether such studies already exist.
However, it is a fact that in the past, all technologies that could have been used to serve humanity have been massively abused for profit. I don’t understand why it should be any different with cloud LLMs, which are offered exclusively by some of the world’s largest corporations.
Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with the probable outcome here. I just think that it’s more likely at this point in time for the LLM output to be doing its stochastic thing in a way your human brain is seeing patterns in. But, I was also curious how wrong I was and that’s part of why I asked for some examples. Not that I could really validate them
Yes, that could well be the case. Perhaps I am overly suspicious, but because the potential of LLMs to influence public opinion is so high due to their reach and the way they present information, I think it is highly likely that the companies offering them are already profiting from this, or at least will do so very soon.
Musk is already demonstrating in his clumsy way that it is easily possible to manipulate the output in a targeted manner if you have full control over the model – and this isn’t the first time he has attracted attention for doing so. You almost have to be grateful to him for it, because it’s so obvious. If you do it more subtly, it’s even more dangerous.
In any case, the fact is that the more people use LLMs, the more “interpretive authority” will be centralized, because the development and operation of LLMs is so costly that only a few large corporations can afford it – and they want to make money and are unscrupulous in doing so.
In any case, we will not be able to rely on people’s ability to recognize attempts at manipulation. I think this is already evident from the fact that obvious misinformation on mainstream social media platforms and elsewhere is believed unquestioningly by so many people. Unfortunately, the effects are disastrous: if people were more critical, Trump would never have become US president, for example – certainly not twice.
A bunch of this can be expected failure modes for LLMs. Do you have a list of short examples to get an idea?
Yes, it’s clear that some of this may have to do with the fact that even if cloud LLMs have live browsing capabilities, they often still rely on outdated information from their training data. I am simply describing my impressions from somewhat extensive use of cloud LLMs.
I don’t have a list of examples, but in my comment above I have mentioned two that I find suspicious.
I simply think that these products should be used with skepticism as a matter of principle. This is simply because none of the companies that offer them are known for ethical behavior - quite the opposite.
In the case of Google, for example, I don’t think it will be too long before (public) advertising opportunities are implemented in Gemeni, because Google’s business model is essentially the advertising business. The other cloud LLMs are also products of purely profit-oriented companies—and manipulating public opinion is a multi-billion dollar business that they will certainly not want to miss out on. Social media platforms have demonstrated this in the past as has Google and others with their “classic” search engines, targeting and data selling schemes. Whether this raises ethical issues is likely to be of little concern to these companies as their only concern is profit.
The simple fact is that it is completely unclear what logic the providers use to regulate the output. It is equally unclear what criteria are used to select training data (here, too, the output can already be influenced by deliberately omitting certain information).
What I am getting at is that it can be assumed that all providers are interested in maximizing profits—and it is therefore likely that they will allow themselves to be paid to specifically promote certain topics, products, or even worldviews, or to withhold information that is unwelcome to wealthy interest groups.
As a regular user of cloud LLMs, I have the impression that this is already happening. I cannot prove this tho, as it would require systematic, scientific studies to demonstrate whether and to what effects manipulation occurs. Unfortunately, I do not know whether such studies already exist.
However, it is a fact that in the past, all technologies that could have been used to serve humanity have been massively abused for profit. I don’t understand why it should be any different with cloud LLMs, which are offered exclusively by some of the world’s largest corporations.
Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with the probable outcome here. I just think that it’s more likely at this point in time for the LLM output to be doing its stochastic thing in a way your human brain is seeing patterns in. But, I was also curious how wrong I was and that’s part of why I asked for some examples. Not that I could really validate them
Yes, that could well be the case. Perhaps I am overly suspicious, but because the potential of LLMs to influence public opinion is so high due to their reach and the way they present information, I think it is highly likely that the companies offering them are already profiting from this, or at least will do so very soon.
Musk is already demonstrating in his clumsy way that it is easily possible to manipulate the output in a targeted manner if you have full control over the model – and this isn’t the first time he has attracted attention for doing so. You almost have to be grateful to him for it, because it’s so obvious. If you do it more subtly, it’s even more dangerous.
In any case, the fact is that the more people use LLMs, the more “interpretive authority” will be centralized, because the development and operation of LLMs is so costly that only a few large corporations can afford it – and they want to make money and are unscrupulous in doing so.
In any case, we will not be able to rely on people’s ability to recognize attempts at manipulation. I think this is already evident from the fact that obvious misinformation on mainstream social media platforms and elsewhere is believed unquestioningly by so many people. Unfortunately, the effects are disastrous: if people were more critical, Trump would never have become US president, for example – certainly not twice.