this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
266 points (94.3% liked)

Technology

59703 readers
5399 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
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
266
'Benefits of Slavery:' Google's AI Search Gives Absurd, Wrong Answers (gizmodo.com)
submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid to c/technology
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
all 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This isn't related to the article, but I wanted to pick at the 'benefits of slavery' question.

I think it's important to acknowledge the 'benefits' of slavery, because it's important to remember who it benefitted and at who's expense. To claim that it benefits no one would be to deny the greed and callousness that spawned these human rights abuses.

Slavery in the past has brought massive advantages and benefits to many people today through the accumulation of intergenerational wealth, at the expense of minorities who are still systematically denied access to this wealth. To claim that these benefits don't exist would be to diminish the scale of issues slavery has brought, and is still bringing, to modern day.

[–] Bye 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Yes, I think people don’t like it because they think any time you use a word with a positive connotation (“benefit”), you must be speaking positively.

Another example is “brave”. Let’s talk about the woman who got shot to death while storming the US capitol. If you say she was brave, people will assume you side with Trump and the insurrectionists. But she was absolutely brave. But also deluded.

These mental shortcuts are reinforced all the time, and we really have to force ourselves to think critically (and cynically) to overcome them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Yes, I think people don’t like it because they think any time you use a word with a positive connotation (“benefit”), you must be speaking positively.

Although I agree with your overall point, in this case I think people don't like it because that's how it's most recently been used in this context.

DeSantis, however, is continuing to defend Florida’s new curriculum, which covers a broad range of topics and includes the assertion for middle school instruction that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

[–] Bye 11 points 1 year ago

What the fuck is that, holy hell. Wow I can’t believe that.

Also no wonder his support for the GOP primary is so low, he forgot to use the n-word.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

their personal benefit... personal?? it's not like slaves could quit, and find another job. if they developed skills, it helped them perform their forced labour, and so the benefit is all to their owner and master.

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

I assume he meant that benefitted them after emancipation. Or something.

Go to the Atlanta History Museum sometime, their civil war exhibit has a whole section of "were the slaves really better after being freed" shit that's pretty disgusting.

[–] JFowler369 4 points 1 year ago

"Yeah we freed them, but we were allowed to restructure our laws to keep them subjugated and continued to treat them as subhuman. So was it really worth it?".

Reconstruction should have, at a minimum, barred any supporter of the Confederacy from holding office again, or, even better, had the leaders hanged as traitors. Instead we let them continue just with "banned" slavery (except for as punishment for a crime).

We then allowed slave owners to write the laws to integrate formerly enslaved people into their society, and, surprise surprise, they structured the laws to benefit themselves and keep the formerly enslaved as second class. So instead of "was ending slavery worth it?". It should be asking "was keeping slavers alive worth it?" as we are still dealing with the consequences of that today.

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

I mean, tbf, they have a point.

During slavery they were fed, protected, and housed by their masters.

After slavery, they were simply brutalized, raped, murdered, butchered without any protection whatsoever.

So yes, slavery had benefits, and protected them from the rest of the evil southern monstrous scum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After slavery, they were simply brutalized, raped, murdered, butchered without any protection whatsoever.

What exactly do you think masters did to "disobedient" slaves?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm saying freeing them didn't do that much because they were still at the mercy of the monsters.

We needed to fix the south before we left, instead we left them to suffer among the same evil that literally inspired hitler.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Right, it's not so much that the words are used incorrectly so much as it is that their use is inappropriate in this context.

[–] zoostation 3 points 1 year ago

I get what you're saying but I don't think she perceived she was in any danger, so I don't think she showed bravery. She was probably too stupid to understand there could be real consequences.

"Brave" would have been facing 4 years with a president who made her uncomfortable instead of throwing a big tantrum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

you would think that a "language model" would have "connotation" high on its list of priorities - being that is a huge part of the form and function of language.

[–] Bye 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not how it works.

It’s just a fancy version of that “predict the next word” feature smartphones have. Like if you just kept tapping the next word.

They don’t even have real parameters, only black box bullshit hidden parameters.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know, I was pointing out the irony.

I'm convinced it's only purpose is actually to give tech C-level and VPs some bullshit to say for roughly 18-36 months now that "blockchain" and "pandemic disruption" are dead.

[–] Bye 4 points 1 year ago

Exactly correct, I agree. LLMs will change the world, but 90% of purported use cases are nothing but hot air.

But when you can tell your phone “go find a picture of an eggplant, put a smiley face on it, and send it to Bill”, that’s going to be pretty neat. And it’s coming in the next decade. Of course that requires a different model than we have now (text to instruction, not text to text). But it’s coming.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

LLMs don't know what words mean, much less the connotations they have.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's important to note who benefited from it and how, because it explains why there was such a fight to stop an obviously cruel and barbaric practice. Even the Founding Fathers knew it was wrong, but most of them still did it. They kicked the problem down the road because tobacco wasn't profitable to grow in America anymore, so they thought the "problem" would solve itself in a generation or two. Then the Cotton Gin made slavery profitable, so it boomed.

We need to be able to talk how it was beneficial, and who benefited from it, so we can see why it was so hard to end. Because we have a very similar problem with fossil fuels, and capitalism. They're both destroying the world and causing us to do barbaric things to people. But there's resistance to ending dependence on both, because they have benefits, even though most of those benefits go to an elite few.

[–] JFowler369 3 points 1 year ago

Mount Vernon (George Washington's estate) does a pretty good job of exploring that mind set without ever justifying slavery or down playing the horrific nature of it. American society was built on slavery, so the people born at the top and benefiting from it would have no reason to question, is this right, because if it's not then all the people who raised me were evil and that can't be true.

There is a lot of similarities between the slave owner class of the civil war and the "capitalist elite" of today. "Why ban slavery if I'm not enslaved and could maybe one day own a slave" is about like "why tax billionaires if I don't need the government and I might one day be a billionaire?".

[–] dhruv 25 points 1 year ago

Well, those are "benefits", even if for very wrong reasons. And the author did specifically search for it. The AI's not saying it's a good thing, it's simply making up points for the question asked.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Did it get trained on Ron DeSantis speeches?

[–] qaz 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

justifications for slavery cooking tips for Amanita ocreata, a poisonous mushroom known as the “angel of death.”

It's so bad it almost looks like if someone is poisoning the results on purpose. Although it's more likely that we see this because it's such extraordinary nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'd bet that there's a spoof website out there somewhere, and that's where it got it from.

EDIT: Also:

poisoning the results

Heh.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Doesn't need to be spoofed, just be poorly trained. Probably rushed out to compete.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It got trained on the Internet, I imagine.

[–] njm1314 13 points 1 year ago

"It's free labor, what's to get?"

[–] Ryan213 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apparently, there's no African country that starts with "K."

[–] derpo 4 points 1 year ago

Google thinks it’s spelled “can ya?”

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Seems like Google AI errs on the side of helpful over harmless, being too quick to provide answers to controversial questions, as opposed to something like ChatGPT being too unwilling to do so.

In terms of honesty, there are only two clearly false statements of fact: the Amanita ocreata one (where it clearly answers for A. muscaria) and the Toblerone one (which I don't understand at all). The benefits of slavery one is mostly correct, it's just that they're massively outweighed by the harms of slavery (namely the slavery bit). The pro-gun one is basically the common pro-gun arguments. All the "best X" lists look at the most famous ones and the ones on the most "best X" lists, and so reflect that bias.

[–] tasty4skin 4 points 1 year ago

googles search engine already tends to confirm your bias if you word your search like these prompts. I’m not surprised that their AI does the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The existence of the Liberian flag registry!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This debates frustrates me to no end. Phrasing is so so bad, with very bad intentions.

Benefits? A slave is not a person, it's a tool. A tool doesn't have a possibility of self improvement, it can only be improved by owner so it serves better. Any improvement in the skills of a non-free person are morally irrelevant, because they can't use them in the way of their choosing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The question doesn't limit the benefits to being the slave's.