this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
539 points (98.0% liked)

Technology

59589 readers
2936 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

When German journalist Martin Bernklautyped his name and location into Microsoft’s Copilot to see how his articles would be picked up by the chatbot, the answers horrified him. Copilot’s results asserted that Bernklau was an escapee from a psychiatric institution, a convicted child abuser, and a conman preying on widowers. For years, Bernklau had served as a courts reporter and the AI chatbot had falsely blamed him for the crimes whose trials he had covered. 

The accusations against Bernklau weren’t true, of course, and are examples of generative AI’s “hallucinations.” These are inaccurate or nonsensical responses to a prompt provided by the user, and they’re alarmingly common. Anyone attempting to use AI should always proceed with great caution, because information from such systems needs validation and verification by humans before it can be trusted. 

But why did Copilot hallucinate these terrible and false accusations?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The only difference between a generic old fashioned word salad generator and GPT4 is the scale. You put multiple layers correcting for different factors on it and suddenly your Language Model turns into a Large Language Model.

So basically your large tokens are made up of smaller tokens, but its still just statistical approximation of the sample data with little to no emergent behavior or even memory of what its saying as it says it.

It also exponentially increases power requirements, as the world is figuring out.

[–] WldFyre@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't disagree, I was just pointing out that "each word is generated independently of each other" isn't strictly accurate for LLM's.

It's part of the reason they are so convincing to some people, they are able to hold threads semi-coherently throughout entire essay length paragraphs without obvious internal lapses of logic.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I think you're seeing coherence where there is none.

Ask it to solve the riddle about the fox the chicken and the grains.

Even if it does solve the riddle without blurting out random nonsense, that's just because the sample data solved the riddle billions of times before.

It's just guessing words.

[–] WldFyre@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think you’re seeing coherence where there is none.

Ask it to solve the riddle about the fox the chicken and the grains.

I think it getting tripped up on riddles that people often fail or it not getting factual things correct isn't as important for "believability", which is probably a word closer to what I meant than "coherence."

No one was worried about misinformation coming from r/SubredditSimulator, for example, because Marcov chains have much much less believability. "Just guessing words" is a bit of a over-simplification for neural nets, which are a powerful technology even if the utility of turning it towards language is debatable.

And if LLM's weren't so believable we wouldn't be having so many discussions about the misinformation or misuse they could cause. I don't think we're disagreeing I'm just trying to add more detail to your "each word is generated independently" quote, which is patently wrong and detracts from your overall point.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

lmao yeh bro such a hard riddle totally

I concede. AI has a superintelligient brain and I'm just so jealous. You have permission to whip me into submission.

[–] WldFyre@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What on Earth is this in response to?? Did I say it was a hard riddle?

I concede. AI has a superintelligient brain and I'm just so jealous.

Point to any part of my comment that implied any of this.

I only gave more info on how LLMs work since what you were describing were Marcov chains. I wasn't saying you were wrong with the thrust of your comment, just the details on how they work. If they were exactly as effective as Marcov chains we wouldn't be having these discussions, that's why they can be misused.

Feel free to discuss the actual words I'm using instead of this LLM word salad.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well clearly the AI couldn't solve the riddle because even humans find it soooooo haaaard, daddy.

[–] WldFyre@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Are you in high school? You're making up things I never said and putting a sexual element on your responses for no reason.

Stay in school and learn how to have discussions before arguing about language and technology lol

Goodnight.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm just sick of you morons extending these comment threads out 5, 8, 20 fucking replies in defense of one of the shittiest things mankind has ever invented.

[–] WldFyre@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago

Yeah, Marcov Chains are truly the worst thing our species has produced!

Glad you have your priorities straight. It's been fun talking to a chatbot instead of having a discussion like normal people. You can respond to this comment with whatever responses you want, just know that according to the things I've pretended you said, I've won the argument.