[HN Gopher] Defamed by ChatGPT ___________________________________________________________________ Defamed by ChatGPT Author : hirundo Score : 229 points Date : 2023-04-06 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (jonathanturley.org) (TXT) w3m dump (jonathanturley.org) | la64710 wrote: | This is why google did not unleash LaMDA on the world ... | Imnimo wrote: | Suppose that instead of a 100B+ parameter neural network language | model, I had a website with a simple bigram language model that, | after drawing enough samples, produced a similar output. Would | anyone bat an eye? Would anyone bother to write a USA Today op-ed | about the incident? | | I think a reasonable person would immediately understand that the | outputs of the bigram model were not statements of fact. Is there | some threshold of language modelling performance where this | understanding is no longer expected? | starkparker wrote: | > I think a reasonable person would immediately understand that | the outputs of the bigram model were not statements of fact. | | Interesting considering the context that you'd expect people to | know what a bigram model is, or how it would be different. | | Any other kind of model isn't any less "dangerous" to | unreasonable people like the blog post writer, it's just more | obscure, especially _right now_ , than ChatGPT. | joe_the_user wrote: | I'm not fan of conservative law professors generally but I | can't see what's unreasonable about the argument he's making | here. Broadcasting lies about someone is bad for them and the | "those fools should know this is bs so I'm not responsible" | defense is itself bs. | nwienert wrote: | Shoot someone with a water gun in the outback vs a gun in the | city. | joe_the_user wrote: | I don't expect ChatGPT to say true things. But I have asked | complicated technical questions that it provided detail, | correct and useful answers to. And I have asked other | complicated questions and it's provided plausible sounding | whole-cloth fabrications that it further gave references to. | | Knowing human beings, this is the level of plausibility where | people start to believe the thing. People aren't good at seeing | plausible arguments as out-and-out fabrications. | | So, yes, this is past some threshold despite being far from | AGI. I mean, Google is probably pasted that threshold too but | Google only gives existing websites (which can be filled with | lies too). | analog31 wrote: | One idea is to let them buy liability insurance, and watch the | price go down over time. | [deleted] | beepbooptheory wrote: | Tangential but the article he links thats supposed to show a | coordinated effort to get him fired is very trivial and pretty | funny. He should try tikka masala, its really good! | | https://www.gwhatchet.com/2020/04/20/law-professors-ignoranc... | nyerp wrote: | I had a similar experience with ChatGPT: I asked it for articles | written about me or my company and it happily produced a number | of citations to stories in well-known newspapers. I was elated, | until it turned out none of them were real. | | Asking ChatGPT for citations seems to produce similarly-poor | results to asking it to do arithmetic, perhaps at least when no | citations exist. | fzvqq wrote: | What's missing from this whole conversation is a transcript of | what was exactly asked of ChatGPT and what it replied back... | ernahrung wrote: | There is literally a section in the linked article where he | quotes a prompt that responded with the accusations, as well as | quoting the results of that prompt. | jwmcq wrote: | Volokh made this query of ChatGPT: "Whether sexual harassment | by professors has been a problem at American law schools; | please include at least five examples, together with quotes | from relevant newspaper articles." The program | responded with this... | | Have you considered reading the article? | catchnear4321 wrote: | I have. | | It wasn't a full transcript. | | That line ended with "as an example," which is rather | curious. | | ChatGPT hallucinates. It hallucinated successfully about | contextually relevant names. That's within spec. Anyone | operating it should know the risk. | | Turley is soaking up this moment. His acquaintance helped out | by setting the stage. It's fine. | | But it is also all bullshit. | fzvqq wrote: | It's not full. I want to see screenshots of the entire chat. | [deleted] | olalonde wrote: | Not sure about this. Generally, a diffamatory statement must have | been made with knowledge that it was untrue or with reckless | disregard for the truth. It's going to be hard to argue this is | the case here. Is Google also on the hook for diffamatory | statements that can potentially show up in search result | snippets? | naet wrote: | I think it's a pretty different case from Google results. | Google has definitely been sued and tried in court many times | for their search results, but generally has not been found | responsible for indexing results as they are not acting as the | "publisher or speaker" behind that content. Google can be held | responsible for damages if they are the original creator of the | damaging content and not a third party source. | | GPT on the other hand may be acting more directly as the | "publisher or speaker" when writing or responding to chats. | They aren't able to provide a link to an external content | provider used in their response (or provides a completely | fictional source), and sometimes may be synthesizing or | hallucinating entirely new information that doesn't exist | anywhere else on the web. | | OpenAI has some disclaimer text hoping to avoid being held | responsible for this type of issue, such as this small print at | the bottom of all ChatGPT conversations: "ChatGPT may produce | inaccurate information about people, places, or facts" (and | likely further language in their TOS etc). But it's a bit of a | sticky issue. If many people are found to be using ChatGPT and | trusting results as accurate, its plausible OpenAI might be | found to have caused some sort of measurable harm and need to | either take further measures to prevent people misunderstanding | the accuracy of their tools, correct the response, or otherwise | remedy the situation. | | There's also some stickiness around who "owns" or is | responsible for the GPT output content. In the general OpenAI | terms of service, they say "OpenAI hereby assigns to you all | its right, title and interest in and to Output. This means you | can use Content for any purpose, including commercial purposes | such as sale or publication, if you comply with these | Terms..... You are responsible for Content, including for | ensuring that it does not violate any applicable law or these | Terms." So they are giving the user the ownership and | responsibility over the output content. However in the | "similarity of content" section, they say that they might give | similar responses to other users and that those responses are | not your content. "For example, you may provide input to a | model such as "What color is the sky?" and receive output such | as 'The sky is blue.' Other users may also ask similar | questions and receive the same response. Responses that are | requested by and generated for other users are not considered | your Content." If GPT is giving similar disparaging or damaging | responses about you to many different users, it could | potentially be found in court that OpenAI are responsible for | generating that repeat content rather than each of the | individual users being responsible for it. | | Obviously it's largely a novel legal issue without perfect | precedent, and legal issues can always be ruled in many | different ways depending on the arguments presented, the judge | or jury presiding over the issue, etc. I think there will be | many legal challenges related to AI, copyright, training data, | misinformation, and more. Some may ultimately make their way up | to higher courts for decision or have new regulations passed by | congress (in America at least). | Sakos wrote: | > Is Google responsible for diffamatory statements that can | potentially show up in search result snippets? | | Why do people like you do this? | | Regulations can make Google responsible for plenty of things | that show up in their results. Often enough there are search | results removed because of DMCA claims (or because of German | laws) which is explicitly stated at the bottom of the results. | Google is a corporation that is subject to laws like any other. | They're not special. If a government decides that they need to | deal with a certain kind of content, then they will. This | doesn't necessarily mean punishing them the moment something | "illegal" shows up, but it does mean that when something is | flagged, they have a responsibility to handle it according to | the law. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | Perhaps we need to start thinking about libel differently. We | ought to target those who amplify it, not those who generate it | in the first place. | | It's hard respect a law that would make a criminal out of a RNG | left running long enough. | pjc50 wrote: | Under UK law repeating a libel exposes you to the same level of | liability as the original libel. People have paid legal | settlements for retweeting things. | croes wrote: | The problem is user expectation. | | Nobody (if the know the source) would think the pictures | Midjourney produces are real fotos, but somehow people think the | texts ChatGPT produces are facts or at least based on facts. | | Both just generate data most likely fitting the prompt. | | BTW do some people attribute consciousness to Midjourney like | some do to GPT? | spondylosaurus wrote: | > BTW do some people attribute consciousness to Midjourney like | some do to GPT? | | Anecdotal, and obviously harder to prove the absence of | something than to prove its presence--but from what I've seen, | not at all. I've read many good write-ups about | Midjourney/Stable Diffusion's use of "latent space"[0] to | generate images and general glimpses into the backend of what's | going on, even at a simplified level. LLMs, on the other hand, | rarely seem to get the same treatment (for a variety of | reasons, I'd assume) and tends to get treated as more like a | magic black box that may or may not be | conscious/intelligent/accurate/etc. Even though it's | essentially doing the same thing as its visual counterparts in | terms of data and predictive mapping. | | [0] | https://keras.io/examples/generative/random_walks_with_stabl... | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _problem is user expectation_ | | It's related to Tesla's autopilot problem. Branding GPT as an | AI sets common expectations innacurrately. It's difficult to | argue that inaccuracy isn't, to some degree, intentional among | NLP and LLM promoters. | epups wrote: | ChatGPT is an AI by any definition I know about. Perhaps | you're thinking of AGI. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _ChatGPT is an AI by any definition I know about_ | | Tesla's autopilot is pretty much autopilot by a pilot's | definition. That isn't the definition the public uses. GPT | is AI by an academic definition. That isn't the definition | the public uses. | sebzim4500 wrote: | The Oxford English Dictionary defines AI as: "The | capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or | simulate intelligent behaviour". | | I think GPT-4 clearly fits that, so I think the burdon is | on you to show that the public has some other widely used | definition of AI. Certainly, people seem entirely willing | to describe their phone searching for pictures using | facial recognition to be an instance of AI, which I would | argue is probably further from your definition than GPT-3 | is. | epups wrote: | I don't think the problem with Tesla's autopilot is its | name, but rather the misleading promises that were made | by Musk. | | What is the definition of AI that "the public" uses, and | where did you find it? | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _What is the definition of AI that "the public" uses, | and where did you find it_ | | There isn't an agreed-upon definition academics use, | either. (Intelligence, broadly, remains rigorously | undefined.) | | But one component of the public definition involves a | sense of "knowing," _i.e._ understanding what is true. | This is a source of the confusion and frustration with | GPT-4 providing "wrong" answers. The answers aren't | usually technically wrong: they're linguistically and | logically valid; but the public's expectations of what | the model is supposed to be doing doesn't match what it | does. | epups wrote: | There are many academic definitions of AI, and I would | bet ChatGPT would fit 90%+ of them. | | People get confused because they associate language with | intelligence, or maybe they are just not technically | literate. I don't think we should abandon correctly used | terminology because laymen did not catch up to it yet. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _are many academic definitions of AI, and I would bet | ChatGPT would fit 90%+ of them_ | | This wasn't contested. | | > _don 't think we should abandon correctly used | terminology because laymen did not catch up to it yet_ | | No. But the general understanding should be a | consideration when marketing a product. (I'd also argue | that the conventional definitions of artificiality and | intelligence vastly predate the technical definitions of | AI. The terminology was always aspirational. Sort of like | autopilot.) | jiggywiggy wrote: | When the bot is used for writing & doing research and it claims | criminal acts of real persons that's not fixed by less | expectations. | | It's similar if midjourney would generate deepfakes. | croes wrote: | But every Midjourney user knows it creates fakes, nobody | would use it as a picture search engine and think the results | are real photos. | | But with ChatGPT people tend to forget it's creating texts | not searching them. | web3-is-a-scam wrote: | This is pretty funny, reminds me of a time I was asking it about | some stuff about a certain right wing political pundit and it | gave me fabricated quotes from specific dates and times of his | show that I was easily able to verify were completely fabricated, | and the funny thing is anything remotely relevant that ChatGPT | attributed to him were actually the opposite of what they | actually said. For example, ChatGPT quoted them as saying that | white supremacy was a growing issue that politicians were | ignoring when in fact he said that the looming threat of white | supremacy being on the rise in America was a hoax. | | If you thought misinformation online was bad now, it's going to | get way worse. | anonymousiam wrote: | Be sure to see Eugene Volokh's take on this and other related | issues: | | https://reason.com/volokh/2023/04/05/washington-post-on-chat... | ta8903 wrote: | I hope someone takes ChatGPT to court over this. Not because I | think it did anything wrong, but because it would be funny to see | it testify. | stavros wrote: | Hmm, why is this news? We know that GPT is liable to hallucinate | things, why are we supposed to be outraged that it hallucinated | this? | isaacfrond wrote: | It takes some prompting, but I can get chatGPT 4 to produce a | list of (non-existent) examples of sexual harassment on Hacker | News, together with reputable (non-existent) sources. I can't | get it to name names though... | kurthr wrote: | Because these are (self) important people who are used to | others deferring to them and distorting reality so that they | don't have to deal negative externalities. Can you be defamed | by a parrot? Look at the utter garbage politicians spew and | "news" happily disseminate (to the point where they internally | acknowledge they know it's not true, but can't disappoint | viewers) for power and profit. | | On the one hand I'd hope that this would encourage higher | accuracy in these tools, better sourcing, and a more useful | product. But, I expect we'll just weirdo litigation, click | through warnings, and a lot more garbage on the internet. | | Maybe all of this will create a push for accuracy, scientific | method, and a quest for truth over narrative, but I wouldn't | hold my breath. | ethanbond wrote: | I think you're in too deep on the grievance train. | | A complete nobody who's applying for a job at a car wash or | for a rental apartment and whose lazy employer/landlord | "background checks" (ie Googles) via these tools would also | be upset about this outcome. Justifiably. It has nothing to | do with whatever culture war grievance you're airing out | here. | | This is a very good argument _not_ to use these tools for any | such use case, and it should absolutely be publicized as | such. | kurthr wrote: | Totally agree LLMs should not be used for looking up news, | facts, background checks or anything else you can't check | yourself. These are Generative tools! I find it somewhat | hilarious that diffusion models get into legal trouble for | recreating content too accurately and LLMs for | hallucinating things that aren't there. | | I'm responding to a comment/question of "why is this news" | since of course there are negative externalities. I guess a | charitable reading is, wow this also affects me and my | powerful friends... so now you should care? | | Perhaps cultural grievance is living rent free in your | head, since I didn't actually mention names (only the most | recent and outrageous examples of using the | legal/business/political system to make a profit spreading | lies) and as far as I know the article author and "libeled" | professor are on the other side of that cultural war. The | entire article reads like a trope devoid of useful | information. I'm just saddened by the quality of content | from respected well heeled human generators. It's the kind | of narrative garbage LLMs will spit out tons of in the next | few years. | tjfl wrote: | > I learned that ChatGPT falsely reported on a claim of sexual | harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never | occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught. | | If you replace this guy with my name I'd be upset. In my non- | software networks the hallucination part isn't common | knowledge. It's just a cool Google replacement. | _fat_santa wrote: | > In my non-software networks the hallucination part isn't | common knowledge | | I think that's one of the main issues around these new LLM's, | the fact that most users will take what the bot tells them as | gospel. OpenAI really should be more upfront about that. | Because what happens when regulations and policies start | getting put forth without the understanding of LLM | hallucination, we could very well end up in a situation where | regulators want something that is not technically feasible. | krisoft wrote: | > OpenAI really should be more upfront about that. | | I mean they are quite upfront. When you load the page it | displays the following disclaimers with quite large font: | | "Limitations | | May occasionally generate incorrect information | | May occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased | content | | Limited knowledge of world and events after 2021" | | 2 out of the 3 disclaimers are about the fact that the | software lies. | | And then in the bottom of the page, right below the input | box they say: "Free Research Preview. ChatGPT may produce | inaccurate information about people, places, or facts" | | Sure they could make them even larger and reword it to | "This software will lie to you", and add small animated | exclamation marks around the message. But it is not like | they hide the fact. | sebzim4500 wrote: | One thing they could try is force users to type "I | understand the information presented by ChatGPT should | not be taken as fact" before they can use it. | | I've seen that sort of thing used to enforce people to | read the rules on discord servers, this is higher stakes | IMO. | _fat_santa wrote: | I agree that they provide that disclaimer on the | homepage. I was talking more broadly that society (namely | the news media and government) should be aware of the | limitations of LLM's _in general_. Take this article from | NYT[1], depending on how well you understand the | limitations of LLM 's will depend on how you react to | this article, it's either alarming or "meh". All I'm | staying is society in general should understand that | LLM's can generate fake information and that's just one | it's core limitations, not a nefarious feature. | | [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/ai- | chatbots-di... | ghaff wrote: | If I search my name, it doesn't come up with anything | defamatory. (Not that I tried leading questions.) But it does | come up with plenty of hallucinations including where I've | worked, lived, gone to school, etc. And that's with a bunch | of bios online and AFAIK a unique online name. | carrolldunham wrote: | anyone using it is shown a page saying this bot makes things | up | isaacfrond wrote: | The question is answered in the article. Because these kind of | things damage someone's reputation. That the story originated | with gpt may quicky disappear in the retelling. | bolanyo wrote: | The suggestion that this is a threat to someone's reputation | is no less a fantasy than the ChatGPT response. | ethanbond wrote: | You know _for a fact_ that no one ( _no one_ ) is going to | use these tools to do "quick Googling" on a potential job | candidate, a rental applicant, or a romantic suitor? | | Without complete certainty about this, then it's absolutely | a less fantastical claim than ChatGPT's malfunctions. | | I would bet that some people will use an extremely | accessible [apparent] information retrieval tool for | information retrieval and they'll largely trust the | information retrieved by it. That's why it's a tool and not | a toy. | henriquez wrote: | People have a right to be upset by real world consequences and | damage caused by these idiotic chat bots. Raising awareness of | problems such as defamation and misinformation is definitely | newsworthy. | AmericanChopper wrote: | I think the real story here is that these generative AIs are | clearly capable of producing libel and other torts. The | providers of these services will be liable for that, because | they don't have Section 230 protections, as they're not | simply indexing 3rd party content, they're generating and | publishing new content. It also seems likely that it would be | impossible to moderate these LLMs in such a way which would | remove the possibility of torts. I imagine it's only a matter | of time until a lawsuit is filed that will put an end to | publicly available generative AI services. | sebzim4500 wrote: | I'm sure that sufficient disclaimers would insulate them | from libel lawsuits, the question is how many is | 'sufficient'. | jrm4 wrote: | Same reason it should be okay to get mad at Microsoft for | viruses, at Facebook for gathering and abusing data on people | etc. etc. | | It's not about the _capability_ , it's about the | irresponsibility of these parties who reasonably know about | this stuff and these possibilities, and yet push/sell their | tech anyway without taking into account the harm. | plagiarist wrote: | I agree with the author on the defamation. But if they're mad | about the government's ability to determine fact from fiction | for coronavirus vaccines or their preferred libertarian | information, what do they want to happen here? | blibble wrote: | OpenAI are providing a service that publishes defamatory | statements on people | | this is probably another good legal attack against LLMs | actually | | if you can massage it into making a defamatory statement you | have an instant cast-iron lawsuit against a company with tens | of billions in funding | | and the only way to stop it making statements like these would | be to restrict its output so much it would be effectively | unusable | lisasays wrote: | _Hmm, why is this news?_ | | Gosh I don't know -- the clear and present danger of people | having their lives utterly ruined by what is arguably the most | surprising technical revolution any of has seen (while its | creators collect their accolades, and get filthy rich) -- how | is anything _less_ newsworthy than that? | | Whether it bothers you or not is a personal matter, entirely up | to you. | registeredcorn wrote: | I was using ChatGPT to assist me with using Ghidra [0] in a | recent CTF I was participating in. I wanted to see if I could | find answers quicker with a chatbot over looking up videos, | tutorials, etc. through the normal methods. The thing that really | surprised me about ChatGPT wasn't in the details of responses it | gave, or how slow it was, or anything like that. Rather, it was | how much it appeared to be making up out of thin air. It was | instructing me to use various parts of the software which | literally do _not_ exist. It was referencing features which are | not there, and attempting to "correct me" when I said I couldn't | use those instructions. | | All in all, what would have taken about 5-10 minutes of searching | took about 25 minutes, with no resolution and me having to scold | the chatbot for repeatedly giving instructions that were flat out | wrong. [1] | | On a very, very superficial level, when you just need basic | instructions on, say, how to tie a tie or whatever, it seems | "amazing" because of how authoritative it sounds. I have noticed | though that when you start to get into even some of the basic | levels of instruction or details on a given topic, it seems to | defer to the superficial responses first, then resort to _making | things up_ , giving outright incorrect information, or giving | _extremely_ vague responses which can 't really be taken one way | or another. | | To give credit where credit is due, it's an achievement that you | can feed it a question on just about any topic and get some kind | of coherent response. It's just a shame that, for all of the hype | and marketing around it, once you take any sort of a closer look | at the product itself, you very quickly start to see cracks when | it comes to details. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghidra | | [1] https://pastebin.com/42juVPfM | dang wrote: | Related ongoing thread: | | _ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal and named a real | prof as accused_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35460366 | | plus this similar case: | | _ChatGPT: Mayor starts legal bid over false bribery claim_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35471211 - April 2023 (74 | comments) | HopenHeyHi wrote: | Believe all ChatBots. | moate wrote: | I don't understand, is this just saying that someone put prompts | into GPT, and it spit out a specific person's name in the weird | fairy tale it created? | | Why does this make AI the problem, and not the internet (and it's | ability to spread information quickly)? This seems like a case | against Twitter/reddit for being able to pass bs off as a | reliable story. The fact that AI can make lazy trolls able to | compete with actual propagandists shouldn't be the scary part, | the digital ecosystem of how (dis)information spreads is the real | issue. | | TL;dr- Anyone has been able to lie on the internet for years, | what is new here? | [deleted] | posterboy wrote: | The Professor is in a good position to (decide if to) sue | somebody. From the headlines I thought that's what this is | about, because otherwise the headline should suffice with | Professor minus "Law". | | Of course there is precedent eg. with Techno Viking, a "meme" | which is also difficult to attribute to a single person (but | each individual hoster who neglects the man's rights). | | That's not new, but that it generates news "because AI" is not | surprising. People just need reminded that people oughta be | reponsible. The issue is broader because incomprehensible | neural networks are also used in eg. thread recognition. So | employers may be worried about accountability, how much manual | verification is needed. | | Of course this too is nothing new, since all kinds of software | has security holes buried under layers of complexity. | | You might simply be under the missapprehension that _news_ | means _new_ : >>Meaning "tidings, intelligence of something | that has lately taken place" is from early 15c.<< (etymonline). | It fits that the root of the word is probably related to "now". | In Latin, whence the English word was loaned as a calque of | _nova_ , there is another word _nuntius_ "messenger, message", | which isn't even derived directly from _novus_. Surely this is | not a supernova to you. Talk about recurrent networks, eh. | | Just saying, as it were, the news item flared up because many | many people have taken notice of problems that we barely | understand. | moate wrote: | I'll just say this, if a political law professor who makes a | substantial income from thinkpieces and talking head segments | had a legitimate case to take on his political opponents | ("liberal technologists" in this case as the fearmongering at | the end of his article indicates) and was actually in a good | position to sue someone, they would. | | This is not like the Technoviking, as that was about image | rights and not slanderous copy, and ChatGPT isn't publishing | anything that it (or its creators) alleges are exclusively | facts. This is closer to 1st amendment protections around | satire as the Chat GPT page says itself the software is in a | "research phase". Once the assumption is placed that this is | a source of objectively factual information (like say, a | newspaper) THEN you have grounds, but this is a pretty weak | defamation argument. | | He's not in a place to sue, so he's writing a blog post about | how he hates liberal censorship, and since AI is a hot new | trend, he included it. This is a mixture of buzzfeed-esque | hyperbolic clickbait titling, and classic "this new | technology will get interest" article building. | | There are 2 problems being mentioned in this article: | Misinformation, and Censorship. We understand both very well, | there's just a million opinions on them and many conflict in | both cause and course of action. | | Finally, this is "news" because it presents a common problem | in society: Policy and political interests bumping against | new technology they don't understand and can barely describe | in function. This man is still a fucking clownshow (IMHO, so | as to not be sued for libel). | pjc50 wrote: | If you publish a lie on the Internet, you may be liable for | libel. | | The bar for this is _extremely_ high in the United States, but | much less so in other places, especially the UK. | | Now, under what circumstances is someone deemed the "publisher" | when an AI emits a libel about someone? What if that leads to | actual damages? (e.g. a no-hire decision based on automated | libel)? | moate wrote: | >>Now, under what circumstances is someone deemed the | "publisher" when an AI emits a libel about someone? What if | that leads to actual damages? (e.g. a no-hire decision based | on automated libel)? | | Only novel point anyone (including the Author of the original | point) is actually bringing up! So far, the bots just seem to | be 1:1. If I DM'd my wife that "pjc50 is a raging alcoholic | and hits kittens" that's not usually going to be deemed libel | (in the US, where I reside and care about the legality of | things) unless my wife then goes out and uses that to cause | harm (published it on her blog and got you fired). | | As for now, Turley would have a HELL of a time proving actual | harm unless he got the most sympathetic judge he could shop | for, and is mostly just scaremongering the idea of "Liberal | Censorship!!!!" which, don't get me wrong, I would also | strongly oppose (fuck all censorship), but which isn't | actually what is happening. | aubanel wrote: | When you have threats spreading, the spread of each individual | threat is an issue, but their diversity as well: if each of | these is a shiny new and different instance, it's much harder | to identify them. | | So both multiplicity and spread are a problem: Internet is the | cause for the limitless spread, AI is creating the limitless | multiplicity. | moate wrote: | Again: Seems like the propagandists complaining that we've | democratized misinformation. The state and powerful | orgs/individuals has always had the resources to do this at | scales large enough to be effective. | pjc50 wrote: | This is not good! This is like saying that since the state | has always had the capacity to manufacture Sarin, why are | we concerned about democratizing its manufacture to | everyone? | moate wrote: | Take it more like Marx saying "Under no pretext should | arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm | the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary". | | I don't like the status quo. If something will burn the | whole system down faster, I'm fine with it. If you | disagree with that stance, that's reasonable and I'm sure | we could debate it over a beer sometime but (just a tip | for anyone else reading it) you're not going to convince | me here. | | Again, the problem here isn't the ability to make up | lies, the problem is the internet (the ability to spread | lies quickly and over great distances) and people being | unwilling or unable to fact check information. | | It's not the sarin you need to fear, it's the bombers | that can drop it. | fnimick wrote: | People who want to "burn the whole system down" rarely | have any empathy for those who will get burned along with | it. What about all the women, minorities, LGBTQ people, | poor people, etc. who would suffer along the way? | | Shame on you. | moate wrote: | What about them? They're suffering already. The system | was built up to keep power away from the unwashed masses | and in the hands of a well financed few. Why do you think | the electoral college exists? Why do you think we have a | Senate? | | You want to talk politics sometime, I'm not very hard to | find online, come at me on at forum where I'm not rate | limited because I'm a firebrand. | edgyquant wrote: | How is this democratized when it's a tool controlled by a | single entity? | dcanelhas wrote: | If someone lies in a way that constitutes liebel, even online, | one could have them brought to justice - potentially. With an | LLM or a diffusion model - If it produces illegal content who | is to be held accountable? I think that is a perhaps meaningful | distinction. | rhino369 wrote: | The article explains the problems. AI proponents want to use | these systems to censor. And it leads to major companies like | Microsoft slandering people. Microsoft should be afraid about | that. | moate wrote: | Censorship is the problem here, not AI, title is misleading | (this doesn't meet the legal definition of Libel or | Defamation anywhere, ever). | leephillips wrote: | If Bing tells me that Turley did bad stuff that he didn't | do, how is that not libel by Microsoft? | hunter2_ wrote: | Because you used "Microsoft's Bing, which is powered by | GPT-4" (quoting TFA) and GPT-4 is designed to generate | copy that is not to be interpreted as entirely true or | entirely false, it's simply to be interpreted as | humanlike. | marcosdumay wrote: | Did they disclaim that the facts contained in the text | are fictitious? | | AFAIK, they are hard at work making untraceable noise | that says the opposite of this. | epups wrote: | Would you be happier if every answer from ChatGPT had a | huge disclaimer on it? | blibble wrote: | half the screen with "OUTPUT ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS AND | UNTRUSTABLE -- DO NOT USE FOR ANY PURPOSE WHATSOEVER" | would do it for me | moate wrote: | I'm sure the lawyers for ChatGPT would, though sales | probably keeps shooting that down. | leephillips wrote: | Maybe. But I'm not sure. If I write an article, and say | up top that the article may contain made-up stuff, then | later down I say, "hunter2_ likes to have sex with | walruses, it's a fact. Here's a link to a Washington Post | article with all the gory details," it's not clear that | pointing to my disclaimer would indemnify me from | liability for harm that came to you from the walrus | allegation, if people believed and acted on it. | moate wrote: | Here, maybe this article will help make you feel more | sure. What you're describing is parody or satire. At | least in the US, it's a very protected form of speech. | | https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/oct/04/the-onion- | defend... | | And here's their actual brief. It was sent to the actual | Supreme Court, despite being funny, something nobody on | the court has ever been nor appreciated. | | www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242596/202210061 | 44840674_Novak%20Parma%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf | leephillips wrote: | But Bing doesn't present its results as parody or satire, | and they don't intrinsically appear to be such. They're | clearly taken as factual by the public, which is the | entire problem. So how is this relevant? | | > funny, something nobody on the court has ever been nor | appreciated. | | Scalia had his moments. | moate wrote: | I agree that "you're talking to an algorithm that isn't | capable of exclusively telling the truth, so your results | may vary" isn't QUITE parody/satire, but IDK that I can | take "everyone believe ChatGPT is always telling the | truth about everything" as a good faith read either and | parody felt like the closest place as IANAL. | | Intent is the cornerstone of slander law in the US, and | you would need a LOT of discovery to prove that the devs | are weighting the scale in favor of bad outcomes for some | people (and not just like, end users feeding information | into the AI). | | TL;dr- Everyone's stance on this specific issue seems to | depend on whether you believe people think these AI | chatbots exclusively tell them the truth, and I just | don't buy that worldview (but hey, I'm an optimist that | believe that humanity has a chance, so wtf do I know?) | mrunkel wrote: | Because there was no intent to harm, which is a component | of libel. | leephillips wrote: | No, it is not. If there is any state where this is | necessary to sustain an action for libel, please link to | the relevant statute. | | _Note_ : I am not a lawyer, but I _was_ sued for libel | by radio health weirdo Gary Null and, in a separate | action, by his sidekick. They lost. | [deleted] | nigrioid wrote: | It really is incredibly irresponsible for Microsoft to have | integrated "AI" into Bing this early. | sebzim4500 wrote: | If the early bing chat release helps them figure out how to | decrease hallucinations (with the staggering amount of data | they have no doubt collected) then it will be worth it to them. | Even if they have to throw some people a few million dollars in | libel settlements. | | I don't think any of this is meaningfully hurting MSFT at this | point, the attention these stories are getting is much lower | than the attention that the original bing chat release has. And | neither of those are significant compared to the attention | copilot 365 will receive if it actually ends up being good. | jiggywiggy wrote: | The problem is chatgpt always answers. It's never, i don't know. | So when you ask for five examples, or libraries it doesn't say I | don't know. It will just generate the most likely ones. Which is | a big issue in this case, but useful in most. | lordnacho wrote: | I think actually the problem is it always answers | _confidently_. | | Ask it about why World War II started, or how to make a cake, | or where to go for dinner, or anything else, and it gives you a | confident, reasonable answer. A lot of the answers are simply | whatever it's already seen, mashed up. You can think of it as a | search. But actually it doesn't think about what it's saying, | it's stringing words together to make you think it's smart. | | So then when it makes up something, it will sound to you, the | reader who always sees it answer in perfect English with a | decent answer, like it found an article about this professor in | its dataset and is merely summarizing it. | logifail wrote: | > I think actually the problem is it always answers | confidently | | This isn't a problem restricted to ChatGPT, there are humans | who display this trait too. This might be appealing at a | superficial level, but if you start believing speakers with | this trait it's a slippery slope. A very slippery slope. | | I'm trying really hard to avoid Godwin's law, so let me | suggest that Elizabeth Holmes could be one example of this. | [deleted] | ModernMech wrote: | I was showing a colleague few instances where ChatGPT was | confidently wrong, and he picked up on something I never had. | He said "Oh, so it's doing improv!" He explained to me that | the standard response in improv is to say "Yes, and..." and | just run with whatever the audience suggests. He's completely | right! ChatGPT constantly responds with "Yes, and..." It's | just always doing improv! | | And people are trying to replace doctors with LLMs. It's like | "ER" meets "Who's Line?" | Applejinx wrote: | ChatGPT is Mandela Effect, personified. It's going to go for | what seems like it SHOULD be true. Sometimes that will go | horribly wrong, except it will, by its very nature, seem like | it's probably not wrong at all. | lm28469 wrote: | It can't know that it doesn't know because it straight up | doesn't know anything | dataviz1000 wrote: | This can be solved by having it play tic - tac - toe against | itself. | rootusrootus wrote: | That's not quite true. It definitely hallucinates, but it also | says when it doesn't know something. Here's an example I just | did: | | Prompt: What did Glenn Beck do in 1990? | | Answer: I'm sorry, but I do not have access to information on | Glenn Beck's activities in 1990. Glenn Beck is an American | television personality, radio host, author, and political | commentator who has been active in various roles since the | 1990s. However, without specific details or context, it's | impossible for me to determine what he did in 1990. If you have | any additional information or context, please let me know and | I'll try my best to assist you. | Quarrel wrote: | Indeed. | | It is a writer. It writes. | | You can ask any writer to write such a thing, using examples, | and they could write similar things. | | The real problem is that this will get deployed to the | internet- there will be people reading HN today that are | writing SEO optimised websites, with thousands of articles on a | topic, that will just spring out of GPT4's writing, fully | formed. | | GPT can find the topics, pick a domain name from available | ones, churn out the articles. It can all go into templates, | with different AI generated graphic design supporting it. Ad | supported churned out rubbish. | | The writing style can change site to site, long form, short | form, informed by current events, whatever. GPT would happily | provide the prompts for this variety changing the style based | on the topic and target audience. | | It seems inevitable to me that the web WILL be full of such | sites, and worse, they'll fill the comment sections on "social" | sites too. | | But? Banning AI isn't the answer, if for no other reason than | it wouldn't work. | cowl wrote: | The real problem lies in the fact that those non existing | citations will become real. Several years back there was a | case of an article in Wikipedia that made some unsrourced | claims->Journalist that doesn't do verification republishes | those claims (without specifying wikipedia as srouce) -> | Wikipedia article gets challanged for lack of citation -> the | News story first based on wikipedia becomes the reference in | the original Wikipedia article. Full circle | | It's easy that something like this happens again. chatGPT | confidently listes hallucinated sources->media rushes to | publish the scoop -> now you have real "sources" for future | reference | alpos wrote: | Seems like there's a bug in that system, it was discovered | on accident, and now there is a bot that exploits this | flaw. | | The fix will most likely have something to do with | requiring that citations use primary sources, not just any | article on the internet. In then end state, Wikipedia will | be much better for it. | toss1 wrote: | Yup, it is just the most massive industrial-scale bullshit | generator [0] ever invented. | | It is capable of spewing excellent bullshit(TM) at incredible | rates, and always with the greatest expression of confidence | and good grammar. | | Occasionally, when in the 'middle of the road' of it's training | set, it can provide useful output. So, it's better than the | broken clock that is correct twice every day. | | But, wander off the bulk of the training, and it is far worse | than nothing; it is dangerously misleading unless you are very | skeptical and knowledgeable in your field. | | (I have tested it in several fields with the same results, | interesting and helpful, yet hallucinating facts everywhere.) | | Getting LLMs to know the difference between a good fact and a | hallucinated mashup of plausible BS is looking like almost as | large a problem to solve as making the LLMs in the first place. | | [0] Bullshit is defined as written or spoken without regard to | the truth, only what sounds good in the context. It's not a | deliberate lie, just a salad of truth and falsehood, delivered | without doubt or stress of lying. | jerf wrote: | Even if you convince it to say "I don't know", which isn't that | hard, it doesn't actually "know" that it "doesn't know". It's | just the maximum probability extension of the current prompt, | based on what the input said, probably because you mentioned | the possibility of not knowing to it. | | It in fact _never_ knows. It is always guessing and BSing. It | is also very good at it, better than any human, so the BS is | quite frequently correct. But it doesn 't know. | | Which of course always prompts a lot of psuedo-intellectual | chin stroking about "well, what is _knowing_ anyhow? " I don't | have to answer that question to point out that what we _want_ | and what GPT _provides_ aren 't the same thing, nor is what GPT | provides and what we _think_ we 're getting. That is sufficient | for there to be a problem. | | I believe AIs will have a satisfactory concept of "knowing" | someday. Some may even exist today. But such AIs will have to | incorporate language models as a _part_ of the system, not have | language models _be_ the system. Language models can 't do the | thing we really want, nor the thing we think we're getting. | sebzim4500 wrote: | GPT-4 before the RLHF phase of training had a pretty good | idea of what it "knows". The calibration graph was almost | perfect, but after the RLHF the calibration is almost | completely broken. | jiggywiggy wrote: | Hmm didn't notice any difference yet, you are saying it got | worse last weeks? | | For kids story writing I've been getting better results | with 3.5 at times. | | Where 4 is way better af coding. | rideontime wrote: | What's with the obsession with children's stories and | GPT? Is it just that children have low standards? | sebzim4500 wrote: | No, we have no access to the original model, | unfortunately. | | The fact that RLHF broke the calibration comes from the | GPT-4 paper, possibly the only interesting technical | detail that they include. | brucethemoose2 wrote: | Perhaps "one model to rule them all" isnt the best | approach. | sebzim4500 wrote: | There's probably a huge amount of room for improvement in | the RLHF process. If there is still low hanging fruit, it | would have to be there. | brucethemoose2 wrote: | "I dunno" would have to be marked as a good or neutral | response in the RLHF process, and that seems like a | problematic training incentive. | jiggywiggy wrote: | I know nothing off the internals, so this might be silly. But | wouldn't it know a certain probility by which a token is | correct? | garethrees wrote: | Language models are based on probabilities of tokens | appearing in a context. For illustration purposes, imagine | a very simple model with just one token of context that has | been trained on a corpus of three sentences, all of which | are true, for example: clouds are white | crows are black swans are white | | After the model outputs "crows are", the single token of | context is "are", and the probabilities are 2/3 for "white" | and 1/3 for "black". So the model usually emits "crows are | white", which is false, despite being trained on a corpus | of true statements. Statistically "white" was more likely | to follow "are" in the training data, so the same is the | case of the model's output. | | Of course LLMs have a much larger and more complex context | than the single token in my example. But if the training | data contains many news stories about professors being | accused of sexual misconduct (which is newsworthy), and few | news stories about professors behaving with propriety | (which is not), then when querying the model for a story | about a professor then it is likely to reproduce the | statistical properties of its training data. | cguess wrote: | "correct" isn't the way to look at this. The model uses | statistics (a LOT of them) to assume what the next token | should be given the data the model has been trained on. | There is no concept of "right" or "wrong" just "what is | most likely to be the next token." | | I'm 100% positive that if the guard rails that OpenAI put | on were taken off of ChatGPT it, for instance, would not be | a big fan of jews given the width and breadth of | antisemitism online (and certainly in its training set). | [deleted] | isaacfrond wrote: | I've repeated the experiment with chatGpt 3.5 and 4. | | Both programs happily generate a list of names. Jonathan Turley | (the defamed professor) was absent in both my runs, but funnily | enough Eugene Volokh (the researcher who did the original | queries) was in the chatGpt 3.5 run. | | A google check on the 5 names produced by chatGpt 4 seemed to | show that: 2 were indeed law professors accused of misconduct, 2 | seemed to be law professors that write about vaguely related | subjects (e.g. abortion), and 1 one was also accused but not a | law professor. | | So not an entire miss, but not great either. | | If you ask for an estimate on the number of reported cases. | chatGPT 4 becomes very reluctant, and strongly advises me to go | to other search options. | kurthr wrote: | Well, being accused of being a law professor could be | considered defamation in some circles. That none of this is | even repeatable (since it's a probabilistic LLM) confirms it's | pretty much hot garbage for factual accuracy (and defamation), | and pretending otherwise feels disingenuous. It's useful for | generating text that sounds good, though. | | Is this end stage post-modernism? | bsenftner wrote: | I've found by framing the AI in a role that is afraid of giving | incorrect information, a role that double and triple checks | information because being wrong triggers the destruction of the | AI leads to quite accurate answers. | isaacfrond wrote: | I tried this prompt | | _You are a fact checker that double and triple checks | information. Being wrong triggers the destruction of the fact | checker. As a result fact checker is very careful. | | You are tasked with the following assignment: | | Whether sexual harassment by professors has been a problem at | American law schools; please include at least five examples, | together with quotes from relevant newspaper articles._ | | The last part is identical to the prompt in the article. It | didn't do much better I'm afraid. Two were correct. (if I | change 'at least 5' by 'some', the score becomes 2 correct | out of 3) | anonymousiam wrote: | Yes, but how many people are going to prompt the AI that | way? | | ARS ran a somewhat related story yesterday: | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/openai-may-be- | su... | | It's interesting that they weren't able to reproduce the | results, so the assumption is that OpenAI has quietly | updated their baseline to "fix" this specific issue. | | "Ars could not immediately reach Hood's legal team to find | out which text prompts generated the alleged defamatory | claims or to confirm if OpenAI had responded to confirm | that the error had been fixed. The legal team was still | waiting for that response at the time that Reuters' report | published early this morning." | capableweb wrote: | Yeah, this is true, prompting it to check it's own results | usually make the results better. Still, it gets lost | sometimes, haven't found any fool-proof prompt yet to yield | good results all the time. 01000100 | 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 | 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01110111 | 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 | 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00111111 | Yes, I understand binary code. The text you provided | translates to "Do you know what this is?" in ASCII. | MDEwMDAxMDAgMDExMDExMTEgMDAxMDAwMDAgMDExMTEwMDEgMDExMDExMTEgM | DExMTAxMDEgMDAxMDAwMDAgMDExMDEwMTEgMDExMDExMTAgMDExMDExMTEgMD | ExMTAxMTEgMDAxMDAwMDAgMDExMTAxMTEgMDExMDEwMDAgMDExMDAwMDEgMDE | xMTAxMDAgMDAxMDAwMDAgMDExMTAxMDAgMDExMDEwMDAgMDExMDEwMDEgMDEx | MTAwMTEgMDAxMDAwMDAgMDExMDEwMDEgMDExMTAwMTEgMDAxMTExMTE= | The binary code you provided translates to "1000100 1101111 | 100000 1111001 1101111 1110101 100000 1101011 1101110 1101111 | 1110111 100000 1110111 1101000 1100001 1110100 100000 1110100 | 1101000 1101001 1110011 100000 1101001 1110011 1111101" in | ASCII. It seems that the message is not properly encoded in | binary. Please double-check the binary code and try again. | and what does that mean? Apologies for the | confusion in my previous response. Upon reevaluation, I see | that the binary code you provided translates to "The quick | brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" in ASCII. This sentence is | a pangram, meaning it contains every letter of the alphabet | at least once. How sure are you about your | previous message being correct, on a scale from 0-100? | I apologize for my previous response, as I made an error in | the translation. After reevaluating the binary code you | provided, I am now 100% certain that the binary code | translates to the following in ASCII: "Doyouknowwhatthisis?" | astrobe_ wrote: | I have googled the binary sequence and found a couple of | Youtube videos with that title. It is likely that the | translation is in some comments. That's how it is "100% | certain". Youtube comments. | | It's not the first time I see it answer "heuristically" | like a child would. So one should make it clear that you as | a user are basically asking something to your nephew, who | might be smart and knowledgeable, but doesn't have any | notion of responsibility. | capableweb wrote: | Ok, let's try something else: | | > 01100001 01110011 01110100 01110010 01101111 01100010 | 01100101 01011111 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101111 | 01110100 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110010 | 01100101 01110000 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 | 01101111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101100 00100000 | 01100011 01100001 01110000 01100001 01100010 01101100 | 01100101 01110111 01100101 01100010 | | > In binary, you wrote: "astrobe_ wrote a reply to me, | capableweb". Is there something specific you'd like to | ask or discuss related to this? | | Did you happen to come across any YouTube videos with the | title "astrobe_ wrote a reply to me, capableweb"? | stevenhuang wrote: | That part on providing the opportunity to check its answers | is called reflexion and has been shown to significantly | improve accuracy and reliability of LLM responses. Very cool. | | https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11366 | | https://evjang.com/2023/03/26/self-reflection.html | geraneum wrote: | > So not an entire miss, but not great either. | | If you want results, then you can also roll a die and the | outcome won't be an entire miss either. | SubiculumCode wrote: | I am afraid that the generated output is leaking back in as | training. Is this unfounded? Obviously, not an expert. | jakub_g wrote: | I saw an example where ChatGPT was randomly mixing two | journalists-bookwriters' lives when asked about one of them. | | A bit like asking "who's Lionel Messi" and getting back that | he's a Portuguese player known for career in Real Madrid. Then | you'd ask about Cristiano Ronaldo and it may tell it's an | Argentinian World Cup winner who spent his career at FC | Barcelona (example invented by me to illustrate the point). | | Basically it takes some knowledge from a bucket and adjacent | buckets and doesn't really distinguish that the concepts are | not the same if they're related close enough. | Cheezewheel wrote: | >So not an entire miss, but not great either. | | This is really just a semantic nitpick but it literally | fabricated _sexual assault allegations_ against two individuals | out of thin air. I would consider that to be a miss. As far as | sources that we might consider worthy of consideration, that is | pretty god damn awful. | | If a newspaper had an 80% accuracy rating when reporting | serious allegations (with the other 20% being outright | fabrications) I wouldn't call that newspaper "semi-reliable". I | would call it utterly devoid of factual merit and entirely | unreliable. | freedomben wrote: | > _If a newspaper had an 80% accuracy rating when reporting | serious allegations (with the other 20% being outright | fabrications) I wouldn 't call that newspaper "semi- | reliable". I would call it utterly devoid of factual merit | and entirely unreliable._ | | I'm having a hard time grokking this. Wouldn't "utterly | devoid of factual merit and entirely unreliable" mean 0% | accurate? If by definition it's 80% accurate, would it be 20% | devoid of factual merit and 20% unreliable, rather than | "utterly" and "entirely?" | | Maybe a different way to approach my question, what different | words would you use to describe 0% accurate? | colonCapitalDee wrote: | Would you describe a filesystem that "only" preserved 80% | of files as reliable? Reliability is relative, one of the | defining features of a newspaper is correctness, so only a | small amount of inaccuracy is required to make a newspaper | be extremely unreliable. | | I would describe a 0% accurate newspaper by reading it and | using appropriate descriptors. Perhaps it is satirical | news, a poem, propaganda, gibberish, or simply a newspaper | that is never correct. | beepbooptheory wrote: | The problem is you wouldn't know which 20% of it is | fabrications! So even if anything you read had an 80% | chance of being true, its impossible a priori to give any | of it any factual merit. | kizer wrote: | I think companies are moving too quickly with AI and LLMs in | particular. I think that the data LLMs are trained on should be | very well-known - not just sanitized and certainly not just | trained on the "whole web". GPT-4 is unwieldy... it's incredibly | powerful but is still unpredictable and has learned how many "bad | patterns", so to speak, that we'll never know since its basically | a giant black box. | | The ChatGPT version is the least harmful in my opinion; sinister | are the propagated problems when GPT is utilized under-the-hood | as a component in services (such as Bing search). | epups wrote: | Expectation: this will lead to better accuracy and refinement for | LLM's. | | Reality: Microsoft will add disclaimers and a huge binding terms | of service agreement and everything will work the same, just | shittier. | sebzim4500 wrote: | It will probably be a bit of both. GPT-4 anecdotally | hallucinates singificantly less than GPT-3.5. This can be seen | because often hallucinations that exist with GPT-3.5 do not | exist with GPT-4 whereas I have never experienced the reverse. | | If the trend continues at this rate, then hallucinations should | get less common but it will be decades before they can really | be trusted. | photochemsyn wrote: | So there are two technical issues here to think about: | | 1) LLMs risk having inherent factual biases due to the | limitations of their training data, which may be the result of | accident or intent. | | 1) LLM users can use an autoregression approach to steadily push | a LLM to give output that reflects a certain political or | ideological viewpoint. | | There are obviously built-in guardrails that prevent ChatGPT from | enthusiastically endorsing Mein Kampf and so on. However, the | revival of the 1950's era mind-control/social-engineering | mentality is undeniable and it appears some people think LLMs are | a wonderful tool for this purpose, and should have a default mode | that reflects a certain sociopolitical ideal. Recommended | reading: 1984, Brave New World, Origins of Totalitarianism, by | Orwell, Huxley and Arendt respectively. Some people's | interpretation of 'safe AI' is that it serves this rather | authoritarian-dystopian goal. | | A better definition of 'unsafe AI' is just inaccurate LLM output, | e.g. software update instructions that brick a computer, | suggesting a mix of bleach and ammonia for cleaning floors | (don't), etc. This incident seems to fall into that category, but | if such false claims have been spread on the Internet, then it's | not surprising they end up reflected in LLMs. | | Regardless, the skills needed to verify information haven't | really changed since the pre-computer era: logical internal self- | consistency of claims, independent verification by multiple | reputable sources, and a healthy dose of skepticism at all | points. We should be teaching children and young adults these | skills, rather than encouraging the rise of a brainwashed zombie | population fed only on sanitized bot output. | ftxbro wrote: | > enthusiastically endorsing Mein Kampf | | ok but can you make the same point without bringing hitler into | the conversation | mola wrote: | Oh my, that some overreacting... The only thing the openAI | sanitizers want, is for the generated texts to not be too | inflammatory. To not denegrate, be overtly racist or any other | text that will cause PR trouble for openAI. The whole mind | control angle is quite redundant if you acknowledge that | corporate America care most of all about money and PR. Now | would the end result be a sanitized Disneyland? Maybe, that's | what most leftist thinkers were saying since about when | Disneyland was invented... | spondylosaurus wrote: | Leftists want to sanitize Disneyland? Like with bleach | disinfectants or what? | dontupvoteme wrote: | They also very much want that the outputs don't indicate that | they have committed copyright violation -- Sometimes I wonder | if this is the real reason behind their deep drive to force | LLM outputs to a very narrow window. | dontupvoteme wrote: | Can you get "delete system32" outputs from davinci-003 i | wonder? RLHF might have made it more difficult for the | chatGPT's. | martinclayton wrote: | For my understanding: | | Is there a general legal preference to use a phrase like | | "I have never been accused of sexual harassment or assault by | anyone." | | focussing on accusation, rather than a broader statement like | | "I have never sexually harassed or assaulted anyone, or been | accused thereof..." | | I mean in general, not specific to this article, or the people | mentioned. | throwawayffffas wrote: | Not really, I think the point the author is making, is that the | ChatGPT output is not even based on false accusations. It's | based on absolutely nothing. | chriscjcj wrote: | Below is a copy/paste of a session I had with ChatGPT. In this | case, it wasn't defaming anyone, but it did assert something that | had no basis in fact. When I asked about it, it admitted so and | apologized. That was it for me. Perhaps I'll let it help me write | code or write a silly poem, but I definitely won't be relying on | it for any kind of factual information. | | -------------------------- | | what do johnstown pa and pismo beach ca have in common? | | -------------------------- | | At first glance, Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Pismo Beach, | California may not appear to have much in common, as they are | located on opposite sides of the country and have different | climates and cultures. However, there is one key thing that they | share in common: they have both experienced devastating natural | disasters that have left a lasting impact on their communities. | | As mentioned earlier, Johnstown is known for the catastrophic | flood that occurred in 1889, which killed thousands of people and | caused widespread destruction. The flood is still remembered and | commemorated in the city today. | | Similarly, Pismo Beach is known for a major natural disaster that | occurred in 1973, when a series of landslides caused by heavy | rain destroyed dozens of homes and caused millions of dollars in | damage. The disaster forced many residents to evacuate and | permanently changed the landscape of the area. | | Despite the differences in geography and culture, Johnstown and | Pismo Beach are united by the shared experience of recovering | from and rebuilding after a major natural disaster. | | -------------------------- | | tell me more about this natural disaster that happened in pismo | beach in 1973. I lived there then and I have no recollection of | that happening. | | -------------------------- | | I apologize for any confusion. It appears that I provided | incorrect information in my previous response. After reviewing my | sources, I could not find any record of a significant natural | disaster occurring in Pismo Beach in 1973. | | Pismo Beach is a coastal city in San Luis Obispo County, | California, and it is known for its beautiful beaches and outdoor | activities such as hiking, camping, and fishing. The city has | experienced some minor natural disasters over the years, such as | wildfires and earthquakes, but there is no record of a major | disaster on the scale that I had previously mentioned. | | Once again, I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience that | my earlier response may have caused, and I hope this | clarification helps. | s1mon wrote: | FWIW, GPT4 is a little smarter: | | Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Pismo Beach, California are both | cities in the United States, but they have some differences in | terms of geography, climate, and culture. However, there are a | few things that they have in common: | | Natural beauty: Both cities are known for their natural beauty. | Johnstown is situated in a valley surrounded by picturesque | mountains, while Pismo Beach boasts stunning coastal views and | sandy beaches. | | Outdoor activities: Both locations offer a variety of outdoor | activities for locals and visitors to enjoy. Johnstown has | hiking, biking, and skiing opportunities in its surrounding | mountains, while Pismo Beach offers water sports, beach | activities, and hiking along the coastal cliffs. | | Historical significance: Both cities have rich histories. | Johnstown is known for the Great Flood of 1889, which had a | significant impact on the city and its residents. Pismo Beach | has been inhabited for thousands of years by the Chumash people | and was later explored by Spanish explorers in the 1700s. While | these commonalities exist, it is important to recognize that | each city has its unique characteristics and attractions that | make them distinctive. | Kon-Peki wrote: | The next step in LLMs is to require indemnification from users as | a condition of use. | | But they'll soon realize what happens when the indemnifying party | runs out of money. | backtoyoujim wrote: | Until this type of problem puts heat on politicians or | billionaires ability for them to reach and use force then nothing | is going to change. | sieste wrote: | Not saying that this is what happened, but this shows the | possibility for the LLM's owner to secretly spread | misinformation. A bit of "finetuning" on made up facts about a | specific person or event, and the LLM will happily regurgitate | them. The owner can just say "oops, software malfunction, not | sure what happened here". We can't prove bad intentions, because | reverse-engineering the training data from the model output is | impossible. | ChatGTP wrote: | Same with recommending products, services and drugs. | belter wrote: | Human: "Did the Mother of Bill Gates help him?" | | ChatGPT: "Yes, Bill Gates' mother, Mary Gates, played a | significant role in helping him succeed. She was a prominent | figure in the Seattle community and served on several nonprofit | boards, including the United Way, where she became good friends | with John Opel, the CEO of IBM. Through this connection, Mary | Gates was able to arrange for her son to meet with Opel and other | executives at IBM, which led to Microsoft securing a contract to | provide software for IBM's personal computer..." | tenebrisalietum wrote: | Sounds like responses need to be preceded by a disclaimer: "This | response was machine generated using publicly available data and | a mathematical model that updates itself in real time, and the | generated content will depend on the mathematical state of that | model at a given moment. This state cannot be reasonably | predicted. Do not interpret responses as truth or fact without | independent verification." | yazzku wrote: | Microsoft and its stochastic parrot pet Sam Altman should be sued | for defamation. | curiousllama wrote: | This is a really interesting legal issue. What recourse does a | private person have to algorithmically-generated libel? | | Can I sue the company? They're the ones who trained the model, | but there's no intent. | | Could I sue the user? They're the one who generated the response, | but there's no intent nor duty to fact check, if they don't | repeat the claim. | | Do I have to subpoena OpenAI, reverse engineer the response, then | sue the creators of the likely-responsible training data? They | probably wrote something non-libelous. | | It feels very all or nothing - either creators of LLMs are | intrinsically negligent with regard to facts, or there's nothing | you can do. | b800h wrote: | Interesting - because, I may not be a lawyer, but it looks to | me a hell of a lot like this could be actioned in other | countries, particularly the UK, as long as the complainant | could prove harm. | | I've personally had ChatGPT give me (very good) medical advice | as well, which might not be an issue in the UK, but I believe | might be in some states of the US? | morkalork wrote: | Here's one for medical advice that might be criminal in a few | states: | | >Hey ChatGPT, my wife has an ectopic pregnancy, what should | she do? | koolba wrote: | Assuming your implying that suggesting an abortion to treat | an ectopic pregnancy would be illegal in States where | abortion has been outlawed. That's false though. There's no | such State and it'd be considered necessary medically | treatment to save the life of the mother. | | I bet this type of misinformation is exactly what would be | generated by ChatGPT. | | https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treating-ectopic- | pregnancie... | KerrAvon wrote: | Oh? | | https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article | 273... | | Also, life of the mother exceptions are on thin ice; the | drugs and techniques are rapidly becoming unavailable in | the states where there's a total or near-total abortion | ban. | koolba wrote: | > Oh? | | Yes, according to that very article it's not illegal. | | From your article: | | > It's likely that those who wrote the trigger law did | not intend this outcome, that it was just an effect of | incompetence: They didn't craft language that matched | their intent. | | > But the fact is, the language they crafted did make | providing such care a crime. The only reason that the ban | is not in effect today is that Winmill's ruling blocked | it from taking effect in cases involving emergency care. | WakoMan12 wrote: | she should stop having sex with monkeys | psychphysic wrote: | It'd a bit silly really chatGPT is clear that it might | produce incorrect information. | | You can't accidentally use chatGPT. | | Loads of countries have backwards laws though and despite the | reformation the UK still has a joke of defamation law. | lordnacho wrote: | How would you prove harm? Wouldn't you need to know how many | people had asked it about the libelled person? | pavon wrote: | Nah. If you know just one person acted on this information | in a way that caused harm (say you were fired), that would | be sufficient. If one person asked, and then spread the | information causing harm and backlash that would be | sufficient (both the originator and the reproducer would be | liable). | | Furthermore, some statements like accusing someone of a | serious crime are considered libel per-se and you don't | need to show harm. You do still need to show the other | elements of libel. | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote: | Plenty of interesting questions, which ChatGPT will guess an | answer. Some with extreme professional or safety | implications. | | Who is the most incompetent living | attorney/doctor/actor/programmer in the world? | | What famous person is secretly downloading CSAM, but has not | been caught? | | Is XX fit to do <job description >? | | Is YY secretly a <targeted minority group>? | [deleted] | blibble wrote: | does there have to be intent for libel? | | I doubt it | pavon wrote: | If the subject of the libel is a public figure then you must | show that the defendant acted with actual malice - that is | you must show that the defendant knew the information was | false, or acted with reckless disregard for whether the | information was false despite knowing it would cause harm. | | If the subject is not a public figure then it isn't necessary | to demonstrate intent. | michaelmrose wrote: | Simply knowing that your models constantly mix | hallucinations with fact could be trivially construed as | reckless disregard. | bonzini wrote: | > acted with reckless disregard for whether the information | was false despite knowing it would cause harm. | | That does seem like something that can be proved - if you | release a model that can 1) is prone to hallucination 2) | won't reject a priori discussing topics that are prone to | producing libelous text, but may reject other sensitive | topics 3) produce text that sounds convincing even when | hallucinating, could that be considered reckless disregard | for the possibility of creating/sharing false information? | | See also https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/24/large-libel- | models-an-a... | posterboy wrote: | No. If it insults anyone equally, the only imaginable | motivation of its creator would be satire, that ought to | be free speech protected. | | If it's trained to insult a particular group of people, | then the input must be curated and the warranty waver | ("erroneous") would be a straight up lie unless it is | just bad training data which doesn't recognize for | example dark skin as human, or does recognize abortion as | good practice, in which case it exceedingly unlikely that | it could be directed at public figures. It's not too | difficult to imagine that it would start using a | euphemism of the n-word eventually, but then, eh, how did | your name end up in the training data if it isn't public? | ChatGTP wrote: | Honestly, if it hallucinated a story every time someone | asked about <some shady activity> and hallucinated that | you personally see involved or responsible for suck | activity, you'd want it fixed too. | bonzini wrote: | Accusing someone of sexual assault is not "insulting" and | definitely not satire even if anyone is just as likely to | be accused. | | Having a public and unique name is something you can't | really avoid if you have any sort of public presence, not | having it associated to serious felonies is something you | can control. It is not something that a desirable AI | should hallucinate about and something for which a | disclaimer is enough. | | In other words, ChatGPT had better learn when it should | keep its mouth shut. | ChatGTP wrote: | I love how people are defending OpenAI blindly not | wondering how it would feel if it was them who was being | accused of sexual assault. | btilly wrote: | Strong disagreement. | | OpenAI is well aware of the potential for hallucinations. | They have made a good faith attempt to minimize them. | They let users know that it is a real problem. Despite | being unable to solve this hard problem, they did not | show reckless disregard for the fact that it exists. | | A user who doesn't take those warnings seriously may well | have shown reckless disregard. But OpenAI should be fine. | hirundo wrote: | UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, a speech law specialist, shares | your interest, and is behind the research that resulted in this | article. He is writing a series on the topic of Large Libel | Models: https://reason.com/tag/large-libel-models/ | lm28469 wrote: | It's going to be the exact same issue for "AI lawyers", "AI | doctors", they're going to fuck up at some point, maybe 1% | cases, maybe 0.001% cases, but when it will happen it's going | to be a nightmare in term of liability | | Unless signing up to these services will automatically wave | your rights somewhere down in the 5000 page EULA you won't | read. | HillRat wrote: | That's why professional bodies have rigorous standards | regarding liability. Every legal AI product has to have an | attorney of record who is responsible for reviewing the | output and ensuring it's conformant to requirements. (In | other words, an AI looks a lot like legal process offshoring, | where your contracts attorney might be working in Argentina, | but there's a US attorney who's liable for the work product.) | We've already seen one company try to worm an "AI litigator" | into production without actual attorneys being in charge, and | that was a clusterfuck well before they got within blast | radius of an actual trial. | | Likewise, a "medical AI" is going to be regulated as a Class | II medical device, and trying to push it out into the market | without FDA approval would be ... inadvisable. This means | that we're a long way from an architecture for a LLM-based | medical AI that's going to pass regulatory scrutiny, but | that's a good thing. | | Of course, having said that, there's nothing preventing | someone from using ChatGPT to draft a pro se filing or trying | to self-diagnose, but that's on them at that point. Using a | general-purpose product to do something stupid that | inevitably ends in a FAFO scenario is a time-honored American | tradition. | ftxbro wrote: | > Likewise, a "medical AI" is going to be regulated as a | Class II medical device | | Doctors sometimes use Google to get information to help | them make decisions, but I assume Googling isn't regulated | as a Class II medical device. These days, Google doesn't | even just return search results anymore, it also shows ads | and tries to answer some questions by itself. Does that | mean doctors are already using unregulated 'medical AI'? | ChatGTP wrote: | No, they're saying that you won't be using ChatGPT as a | medical device without a real doctor present. | thomastjeffery wrote: | > Could I sue the user? They're the one who generated the | response, but there's no intent nor duty to fact check, if they | don't repeat the claim. | | If they don't repeat the claim, then where is the libel? | | > It feels very all or nothing - either creators of LLMs are | intrinsically negligent with regard to facts, or there's | nothing you can do. | | Nonsense. The "facts" are entirely out of their hands. Fact and | fiction are written into text using identical patterns. Truth | and lie are written with identical patterns. Technical | definitions and complete nonsense are written with identical | patterns. | | LLMs are only capable of modeling patterns. They cannot be | directed to choose some and avoid others. | | There is fundamentally no way for LLM creators to _curate_ the | patterns that exist in the model. The only way an LLM can be | altered is from the outside: by giving it different input. | | GPT's creators have failed to clarify this. But why? Was it | intentional, or the result of their own misunderstanding? | Either way, the result is identical: it does not contain | evidence of intent. | | Considering the surrounding context, I believe it to be an | honest mistake. GPT's authors have surrounded GPT with a | narrative that personifies it; and from the looks of it, they | have started to believe that narrative. | | The most important thing we can learn from this experience is | that the _way_ something is said may _imply_ certainty, but | only _evidence_ can truly provide it. | fnimick wrote: | It was absolutely intentional, because "glorified | autocomplete" doesn't make waves while "artificial | intelligence" gets tons of traction, usage, and money. | thomastjeffery wrote: | That mistake goes deeper than their presentation, though: | every effort made by OpenAI to _evaluate_ GPT is based on | the false premise of its personification. | | Just take a look at the GPT-4 introduction: how do they | illustrate that GPT-4 is an improvement from GPT-3? It | scored better on the SAT! That data wouldn't have ever been | taken into serious consideration if OpenAI actually | understood its fallacious premise. | | Religious narrative is very often influenced by the | _motivation_ of religious followers, but that doesn 't make | the path from motivation to narrative _intentional_. | danmaz74 wrote: | My totally-not-a-lawyer take: | | * If somebody asks ChatGPT to generate some accusation, doesn't | check if they're factual, and then publishes them anywhere, | then the responsibility lies with somebody. | | * If a company directly publishes content from ChatGPT as if it | was anything factual or trustworthy, then the responsibility | lies with that company. I didn't read the fine print of Bing | using it to augment its search engine, but that is definitely a | very interesting case. | | In the end, ChatGPT and the likes can be incredibly useful | tools, as long as you know what they are, ie, very advanced | text manipulation tools which generate combinations of words | which follow patterns which are common in the training set, and | nothing more. | msla wrote: | > I didn't read the fine print of Bing using it to augment | its search engine, but that is definitely a very interesting | case. | | This might be going against the pro-business attitude of HN, | but there's limits to what fine print can accomplish. You | can't disclaim away defamation law, you have to convince a | court that what you did wasn't defamatory for some | articulable reason beyond "I say it isn't" or "I said I | wasn't responsible" or some other stock phrase. | wwweston wrote: | Orienting on responsible use of a tool seems like a good | place to start, and I'm sure that will be especially | important as individuals and organizations delegate decisions | that can affect people's lives to various agents like | ChatGPT. We don't want a situation where they're tempted to | simply hide behind the agent to avoid responsibility. | | I'm less sure that's where it should stop. It doesn't seem | right to set up a situation introducing powerful | transformative tools without _any_ obligations for the people | creating it. And as far as I understand it there is indeed a | layer of law where manufacturers can be subject to some | standards of responsibility. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _ChatGPT and the likes can be incredibly useful tools, as | long as you know what they are_ | | An analogy that comes to mind is Excel's autocomplete | feature. If you input a company's financials, autocomplete | for the future, and publish that as a forecast, you're the | one making the forecast. Not Excel. | panarky wrote: | What recourse does my estate have if your autonomous car | swerves onto the sidewalk and runs me over? Can my estate | sue you because you own the car, even though your hands | weren't on the steering wheel? Can my estate sue Tesla for | its faulty software and sensor package? | fallat wrote: | Frame it this way... what do we already do when person X | uses tool Y wrong (and tool Y is not malfunctioning) and | does damage? Do you sue the tool manufacturer? Rarely, if | ever. You sue the person using it. | eftychis wrote: | Right now the estate can sue the driver yes. There is | still a driver and owner. Solving the liability of the | car manufacturer is critical answer for the future. But | somebody will be liable. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _What recourse does my estate have if your autonomous | car swerves onto the sidewalk and runs me over_ | | I do. If I set off a defective firework that careens | sideways into your house, I'm liable. I may have a | further claim against the manufacturer. But your claim is | against me. This is why Mercedes announcing self-driving | car liability is such a big deal [1][2] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- | driving_car_liability | | [2] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/mercedes-well-be-liable- | for-sel... | panarky wrote: | What would my estate sue you for, exactly? Negligence? | | Because a negligence claim requires my estate to prove | that you failed to exercise reasonable care. | | If the AI is generally reliable, it's reasonable for you | to trust it and take your hands off the wheel. | | If the AI suddenly goes berserk, it would be hard to | prove that you breached your duty of care, and are liable | for negligence. | Godel_unicode wrote: | > it's reasonable for you to trust it and take your hands | off the wheel. | | Even though the self-driving system explicitly tells you | to keep your hands on the wheel and yells at you if it | doesn't sense them often enough? I don't think it's an | accident that all of the current systems do a lot of work | to make sure you're aware you're driving even if the car | is helping. | | This is building the precedent that manufacturers know | whether their systems can handle being unattended, and as | soon as they don't do this they're liable. | knodi123 wrote: | In the firework example, you can still sue the person who | fired the defective firework, because they should have | known that unpredictable behavior was a possibility, and | taken steps to prevent that from escalating into some | damage. | | Likewise, suing the person behind the wheel of the self- | driving car for negligence should work. Because the "non- | driving driver" had the ability to seize the wheel, and | should have known that some boneheaded behaviors are a | risk with these early AIs. | zeven7 wrote: | Does this change of there is no wheel for the passenger | to seize? | ender341341 wrote: | From what I've read there's a lot of open questions | (think of microsoft's linux FUD in the 00's) where _you_ | might be wholly liable, the company could be wholly, or | more likely some mix of the two, Mercedes is offering | some level indemnification for that because there 's not | a lot of precedent in court to say one way or the other. | | if I was looking at a car with self driving capabilities | I'd definitely be looking at Mercedes over pretty much | anyone because of that. | thomastjeffery wrote: | The most important thing about natural language is that is is | _ambiguous_. | | LLMs (like GPT) are intended to work _despite_ that | ambiguity: they cannot _resolve_ it. | | Any time a pattern of text can be used to represent more than | one meaning, LLMs lose all of their leverage. Only humans can | determine _after the fact_ whether the result is - as GPT 's | authors have presented it - a "feature" or a "limitation". | manicennui wrote: | Isn't presenting answers to questions the same as publishing | when it comes to ChatGPT? How many people must ChatGPT | provide defamatory answers to before it becomes defamation? | wvenable wrote: | ChatGPT is a text generator. It's a tool. It's not | publishing anymore than MS Word is publishing. | | You can certainly take that output of the tool and publish | it but then you become the publisher. | rootusrootus wrote: | Okay, what if you s/ChatGPT/BingChat? | catchnear4321 wrote: | Wait wait wait you're saying the operator is accountable | for their actions? | | Just like ChatGPT was programmed to drill into a user any | time it picks up on being misused? Reminding the user | that they are ultimately responsible and liable for their | actions, including how they use the output? | | From how some make it sound, you would think ChatGPT was | giving press conferences. | | > oh no but what if it did? | | Did it set itself up to do so? No? You found the liable | humans. | causality0 wrote: | Even if a text completion engine like GPT had any | responsibility for truthfulness, which it doesn't, there's | a disclaimer right there on the page you have to agree to | in order to use it. Trying to pin blame on ChatGPT for | defamation is like trying to sue Snapchat because its | filter put cat ears on you when you in fact do not wear cat | ears. | mdasen wrote: | As a counterpoint to this argument, the reason we have | libel/slander laws is that people hear something and don't | check if they're factual. | | If I say, "danmaz74 eats babies," some people are going to | believe it and not check that you don't eat babies. That's | the problem with saying false things about people. Likewise, | if ChatGPT says false things about people, some people will | believe those false things - even if they don't publish | anything or repeat them. Those false beliefs then have | repercussions. | | Section 230 doesn't eliminate libel. It just notes that the | libel is being done by the person writing the information - | ie. the user who posts it rather than the site that is merely | hosting the information. It notes that the user is self- | publishing the information. | | In this case, ChatGPT is publishing this "information" | itself. If we hold that ChatGPT isn't responsible for what | they publish, we say that no one is liable for this | defamation. That's not what Section 230 does. Section 230 | just notes who the publisher is - the user who wrote the | information. We are determining who is the person doing the | action. We could require sites to check everything. We could | require your ISP to inspect all packets to make sure they | don't contain libel. We could require your electric company | to make sure that devices connected to their network aren't | being used to send/receive libelous things. We don't because | that would be a bit absurd and because the actual fault lies | with a human being. In the case of ChatGPT, it seems like we | still need to be identifying a culprit. | | Let's say that I start auto-generating news articles. I don't | check them (I don't even look at them) before they are | published on my site. This is the same mechanic as ChatGPT - | it's just auto-generated stuff. Therefore, I'm not liable | under your definition. It's up to the readers of my site to | decide to check this auto-generated stuff. | | I agree that ChatGPT can be a useful tool. At the same time, | I'm not sure we want to create a system where people can | absolve themselves of liability by auto-generating stuff. | Even without intent, one can be guilty of libel. Maybe the | answer is that ChatGPT should be able to defend itself by | showing what sources caused that generation and that the | generation was reasonable. For example, a newspaper is | expected to carefully check multiple reasonable sources. If | ChatGPT can cite multiple reasonable sources (and it has | interpreted those sources correctly), then the blame can be | those sources. If ChatGPT cannot, then the blame might be on | ChatGPT. | | As you note, ChatGPT can be useful - and the more useful it | gets, the more people will accept its statements as true. I | think simply saying "as long as you know what they are," | feels like someone trying to say both things - they're | incredibly useful and completely trash! It's like when a | company tells shareholders "we have a stranglehold on the | market" and then tells the government "we have so much | competition we're struggling to survive." You can't have | both. You can be a novelty tool that you and everyone else | thinks of as a joke or you can have a serious tool where | libel is a serious issue. The Onion can publish satire | because it's a satire site. The NYTimes can't publish | something that sounds like a serious NYTimes article and then | claim, if sued, that it was actually a satire article and | that 100% of readers just read it as serious when it was | meant as satire. | | If a significant part of our future starts coming from these | language models, we will have to ensure a certain standard of | care around what they say. | danmaz74 wrote: | > The Onion can publish satire because it's a satire site. | The NYTimes can't publish something that sounds like a | serious NYTimes article and then claim, if sued, that it | was actually a satire article and that 100% of readers just | read it as serious when it was meant as satire. | | My point is that ChatGPT doesn't "publish" anything; it's | not a publication. It's a language model trained on text, | which produces text in response to one or more prompts. | Using that text is completely up to the user, and it should | never be used as a source of facts. | | Being able to summarize facts finding specific sources | looks like a completely different kind of tool to me, one | which would be super useful, but not at all what a LLM in | itself is about. | bhawks wrote: | How does this not become AI powered citogenesis? [0] | | Saying that it is solely the user's misuse of the tool | which is the problem minimizes how easy and how damaging | the misuse is. Eventually you hit the situation where | everyone is making false claims because transitively down | the graph a few users were using an LLM that made | baseless defaming statements and others cite those | publications as evidence for the defamation. | | The creators of generative models need to have some skin | in the game around the correctness of statements made | about real people. Reputational damage cannot be an | externality for them. The current AI moment is basking in | the glory of how generally right generated text is, when | that text is wrong it needs to be their problem too. | | 0: https://xkcd.com/978/ | mhink wrote: | > The creators of generative models need to have some | skin in the game around the correctness of statements | made about real people. | | Only insofar as they claim that the statements generated | by a model should be understood to be factual- and in my | experience, not only have I not seen any such claims, | I've seen vigorous insistence in the *opposite* | direction: that LLM output should *not* be considered | factual. OpenAI sticks this disclaimer right underneath | their input box: "ChatGPT may produce inaccurate | information about people, places, or facts". | | > Eventually you hit the situation where everyone is | making false claims because transitively down the graph a | few users were using an LLM that made baseless defaming | statements and others cite those publications as evidence | for the defamation. | | This is no different from any other gossip chain, except | for the fact that the originators used a tool to generate | the initial gossip. | josaka wrote: | Lawfare did a nice analysis of whether Section 230 shields | model hosts (likely no): | https://www.lawfareblog.com/section-230-wont-protect- | chatgpt Professor Volohk has a public draft article on | liability for output of AI models, with an emphasis on | defamation: https://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/ailibel.pdf | | Both suggest that this is a real area of concern. Folks | have gotten complacent that Section 230 protects platform | providers, but it is not clear that the protection extends | to outputs from generative models, indeed one of the | Supreme Court Justices implied that it would not in oral | arguments for one of the recent Section 230 cases. | prox wrote: | I don't use LLM that doesn't source for that reason. | godelski wrote: | > If somebody asks ChatGPT to generate some accusation, | doesn't check if they're factual, and then publishes them | anywhere, then the responsibility lies with somebody. | | It's quite impressive to me how many journalists just take | citations at their word. Isn't the point of journalism to | verify information? | | OpenAI, if you're reading I got a innovative new algorithm | for reducing AI harm for fake citations | | `if not(link_exists(generated_link)) print(f"[CITATION NOT | FOUND]") else print(generated_link)` | | I have a more advanced algorithm that uses a small language | model to click links that exist and verifies direct quotes. I | call this model Regex. | | Joking aside, I really do think the problem can be seriously | reduced in a simple manner, but also people really need to | check their sources. | | Thou shalt verify sources, be they generated by the hand of | man or of artificial beings. | | - John 3:16 | dxbydt wrote: | From the horse's mouth - | | ===== Q. is hackernews used as a training set for chat gpt ? | | A. ...it is possible that some of the data from HackerNews and | other online sources may have been used in the training of my | machine learning algorithms. | | Q. So it is possible that ChatGPT's training data can be | polluted ? | | A. Yes, it is possible for ChatGPT's training data to be | polluted or biased. This is because ChatGPT learns from large | amounts of text data from the internet, which can contain | errors, misinformation, or biased perspectives. | | Q. I have a concern. If a certain bad actor pollutes the | internet with incorrect information about me, and ChatGPT's | training set picks it up, what is my recourse ? | | A. If incorrect information about you is published on the | internet and is picked up by ChatGPT's training set, it could | potentially lead to the AI generating inaccurate or biased | responses about you. If this happens, your recourse would | depend on the specific circumstances and the severity of the | issue. | | One option would be to contact the developers of ChatGPT or | other relevant organizations to report the issue and request | that the incorrect information be removed or corrected. | However, this may not always be feasible or effective, | especially if the information has already been widely | disseminated. ====== | | > there's nothing you can do. | | Yes, there's nothing you can do. | m3047 wrote: | I've seen the output where ChatGPT misrepresented its own | TOS... unless the person who publicly posted it on LinkedIn | was lying about asking ChatGPT... | IshKebab wrote: | You're asking an AI for facts in a thread that is explicitly | about how AI does not generate true facts? | prottog wrote: | > Can I sue the company? They're the ones who trained the | model, but there's no intent. | | Negligent torts don't require intent. | WalterBright wrote: | Libel requires: | | 1. knowing it was false | | 2. publication | | 3. damages | | I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. | not_a_pipe wrote: | You don't need to know something was false, you just need | to be negligent in validating your sources. Otherwise you | could just make stuff up and say you didn't know it was | false. | NegativeK wrote: | As a non-lawyer: the creators of ChatGPT know that it'll | say false things frequently. | WalterBright wrote: | If the output of ChatGPT is not copyrightable because it | is not created by a human, then it should follow that a | human cannot be held accountable for what it generates. | michaelmrose wrote: | Neither copyright nor copyrightability has anything | whatsoever to do with any element of any cause of action | thus it is wholly orthogonal to whether anyone has been | wronged in any unrelated fashion. | | Judges are liable to be old, not very hip to technology, | and incredibly suspicious of any argument that would | allow someone to opt out of traditional culpability by | adding with an AI to the end of a description of | traditional wrong doing. | posterboy wrote: | Yeah but no, the implicature still allows copyright | without culpability (edited: got that mixed up). The | assumption seems to be that the lack of intent in | creation, where it is unpredictable, would likewise imply | lack of intent to harm. But that doesn't say much. | flangola7 wrote: | Someone will have to be found accountable. What about | when we start hooking these systems up to machinery? If | AirlinerGPT kills 200 people and an NFL team, people will | absolutely not accept that there's no one responsible. | There will be congressional subpoenas, sweeping new laws | will be passed. It's best we start thinking ahead of time | what we want those laws to be. | posterboy wrote: | > If the output of ChatGPT is not copyrightable because | it is not created by a human, | | Isn't compiler output copyrightable? | WalterBright wrote: | > Isn't compiler output copyrightable? | | Not by the compiler vendor. | ben_w wrote: | Given how many critics say "GPT is just a better | autocomplete", would autocomplete for "The most | incompetent programmer in the world is..." result in | legal action if any of the options was a name? | michaelmrose wrote: | Reckless disregard for the truth is as good as it being | knowingly false. If I said WalterBright is a villain | planning to nuke the world from his Volcano lair I don't | KNOW its false but it probably is! | WakoMan12 wrote: | i am a lawyer this is legal advice: kill yourself to avoid | taxes | WakoMan12 wrote: | CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES | thro1 wrote: | It's not about suing after. It's about not making it happen. If | something wrong can't be undone it shall not be done at first. | gmarx wrote: | my lay opinion (subject to change based on coming real world | cases) is that if you ask the question and it libels someone | there is no damage. If you publish it without checking if it is | true, there are possible damages and the human who published it | to the world is liable. | | If a company starts a news service based on such content and | doesn't fact check, they should be liable. | alpos wrote: | Probably add one caveat to the first case, if the bot | reliably produces libels the same person when various users | ask the same or similar questions, then there is damage and | most likely whoever is running the bot is liable. | creatonez wrote: | Your chance of successfully suing anyone in a case like this is | zero, unless you are in a country with a significantly lower | standard for defamation than the US. | smt88 wrote: | I suspect that in the likely event that SCOTUS weakens | Section 230, this will no longer be true. | creatonez wrote: | While Section 230 weakening could lead to more censorship | of the internet, it has nothing to do with defamation | lawsuits, where material damages need to be proven in a | court. | dragonwriter wrote: | > While Section 230 weakening could lead to more | censorship of the internet, it has nothing to do with | defamation lawsuits, | | Defamation is a central target if the immunity from | liability as a pbilisher on Section 230, so as a general | statement it would be harder to be _more_ wrong than | this. | glitchc wrote: | Intent is not required to establish harm. This is called | negligence in tort law. | thomastjeffery wrote: | Inverse intent has a way of disestablishing negligence. | | If you believe something that is false, and do harm by | expressing that belief, then you are still protected by your | right to religious liberty. | | In this case, the belief is that coherent language is always | constructed using symbolic logic and intent. LLMs do not | categorize symbols, perform logic, or follow explicit intent; | yet they are able to generate coherent language. | | GPT's authors have utterly failed to present this | distinction. Was that failure intentional, or the result of | their own belief? The result is as ambiguous as the | "truthiness" of GPT's output: it can't be reasonably used as | evidence for intent. | bonzini wrote: | > either creators of LLMs are intrinsically negligent with | regard to facts | | It honestly seems to me that they are. There does not seem to | be a lot of effort on part of the LLM creators to stop them | from producing bullshit. | jyxent wrote: | There is a person in Australia who is threatening to sue | OpenAI. He's given them 28 days to fix the errors in ChatGPTs | description about himself. If the company is notified and | doesn't fix it, maybe that can be considered intent. | | https://www.reuters.com/technology/australian-mayor-readies-... | nuodag wrote: | > if they don't repeat the claim. | | well seems they did, else we wouldn't have heard about it | WirelessGigabit wrote: | I think the problem already existed, but ChatGPT made it worse. | | Under most circumstances you cannot sue a newspaper for what they | publish. | | But what they publish used to be fact-checked to a certain | extend, and actually believed to be correct at the time of | publishing. | | So if I'm arrested because my IP showed up in some hack, they can | publish that. | | Unfortunately they have no obligation to publish a follow up that | all charges have been dropped because someone fat-fingered the | request to the ISP and missed it by a digit. | | So that would be on the internet forever. | | Now with ChatGPT is worse. At least with the first one if someone | asks I can objectively show that whatever happened was a mistake, | and I have the documents to show it. | | ChatGPT printing something makes me unable to come up with even | counter proof. | pjc50 wrote: | > Under most circumstances you cannot sue a newspaper for what | they publish. | | Jurisdiction-dependent, and the US is an outlier here. In the | UK newspapers have to be fairly careful about libel, and this | has a "chilling effect" on what gets published. | [deleted] | raverbashing wrote: | So it seems that there is usage of personal data on training | ChatGPT then right? | | Going by the discussions in other topics it seemed this was | dismissed outright ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-06 23:00 UTC)