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The followup to ChatGPT is scarily good at deception (www.vox.com)

submitted 2 months ago by jeffw to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Computer programs don't deceive. They respond programmatically based on input given.

Any perceived deception by the computer is actually just irrational expectations, etc. by the user.

it will start by telling you it’s “thinking.” After a few seconds, it’ll specify that it’s “defining variables.” Wait a few more seconds, and it says it’s at the stage of “figuring out equations.” You eventually get your answer, and you have some sense of what the AI has been up to.

The opposite is true here. We are being intentionally misdirected by misleading/humanizing language away from what the computer is actually doing. Not even close to understanding what the "AI" has been computing.

However, it’s a pretty hazy sense. The details of what the AI is doing remain under the hood. That’s because the OpenAI researchers decided to hide the details from users... In other words, we’re not sure if Strawberry is actually “figuring out equations” when it says it’s “figuring out equations.” Similarly, it could tell us it’s consulting biology textbooks when it’s in fact consulting comic books. Whether because of a technical mistake or because the AI is attempting to deceive us in order to achieve its long-term goal, the sense that we can see into the AI might be an illusion.

The author conflates the actual deception of the developers with the imaginary deception of the "AI". This type of terrible coverage is completely normal inside the "AI" bubble.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

It’s such a dumb take too. Let’s look at other things that need time to load: video games. Often times the loading screens tell you nothing about what’s actually going on, but hilariously some say things like “weeding the garden” or “sniffing some glue” or other things to that effect.

“It’s lying to us” is such a… naive take. It’s just spitting out preprogrammed text to essentially say “nothing had gone wrong but we are still working on this.”