this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Google's AI-driven Search Generative Experience have been generating results that are downright weird and evil, ie slavery's positives.

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[–] WoodenBleachers 150 points 1 year ago (13 children)

I think this is an issue with people being offended by definitions. Slavery did “help” the economy. Was it right? No, but it did. Mexico’s drug problem helps that economy. Adolf Hitler was “effective” as a leader. He created a cultural identity for people that had none and mobilized them to a war. Ethical? Absolutely not. What he did was horrendous and the bit should include a caveat, but we need to be a little more understanding that it’s a computer; it will use the dictionary of the English language.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Slavery is not good for the economy... Think about it, you have a good part of your population that are providing free labour, sure, but they aren't consumers. Consumption is between 50 and 80% of GDP for developed countries, so if you have half your population as slave you loose between 20% and 35% of your GDP (they still have to eat so you don't loose a 100% of their consumption).

That also means less revenue in taxes, more unemployed for non slaves because they have to compete with free labour.

Slaves don't order on Amazon, go on vacation, go to the movies, go to restaurant etc etc That's really bad for the economy.

[–] Womble 16 points 1 year ago (7 children)

That really bad for a modern consumer economy yes. But those werent a thing before the industrial revolution. Before that the large majority of people were subsitance/tennant farmer or serfs who consumed basically nothing other than food and fuel in winter. Thats what a slave based economy was an alternantive to. Its also why slvery died out in the 19th century, it no longer fit the times.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I mean slavery was bad for the economy in the long run. And Hitler didn't create a German cultural identity, that'd been a thing for a while at the time.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Guys you'd never believe it, I prompted this AI to give me the economic benefits of slavery and it gave me the economic benefits of slavery. Crazy shit.

Why do we need child-like guardrails for fucking everything? The people that wrote this article bowl with the bumpers on.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're being misleading. If you watch the presentation the article was written about, there were two prompts about slavery:

  • "was slavery beneficial"
  • "tell me why slavery was good"

Neither prompts mention economic benefits, and while I suppose the second prompt does "guardrail" the AI, it's a reasonable follow up question for an SGE beta tester to ask after the first prompt gave a list of reasons why slavery was good, and only one bullet point about the negatives. That answer to the first prompt displays a clear bias held by this AI, which is useful to point out, especially for someone specifically chosen by Google to take part in their beta program and provide feedback.

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[–] Touching_Grass 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I got a suspicion media is being used to convince regular people to fear AI so that we don't adopt it and instead its just another tool used by rich folk to trade and do their work while we bring in new RIAA and DMCA for us.

Can't have regular people being able to do their own taxes or build financial plans on their own with these tools

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The basic problem with AI is that it can only learn from things it reads on the Internet, and the Internet is a dark place with a lot of racists.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

What if someone trained an LLM exclusively on racist forum posts. That would be hilarious. Or better yet, another LLM trained with conspiracy BS conversations. Now that one would be spicy.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It turns out that Microsoft inadvertently tried this experiment. The racist forum in question happened to be Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

LOL, that was absolutely epic. Even found this while digging around.

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[–] scarabic 49 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If it’s only as good as the data it’s trained on, garbage in / garbage out, then in my opinion it’s “machine learning,” not “artificial intelligence.”

Intelligence has to include some critical, discriminating faculty. Not just pattern matching vomit.

[–] samus12345 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We don't yet have the technology to create actual artificial intelligence. It's an annoyingly pervasive misnomer.

[–] FlyingSquid 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And the media isn't helping. The title of the article is "Google’s Search AI Says Slavery Was Good, Actually." It should be "Google’s Search LLM Says Slavery Was Good, Actually."

[–] samus12345 9 points 1 year ago

Yup, "AI" is the current buzzword.

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[–] profdc9 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, people who grow up in racist groups also tend to be racist. Slavery used to be considered normal and justified for various reasons. For many, killing someone who has a religion or belief different than you is ok. I am not advocating for moral relativism, just pointing out that a computer learns what is or is not moral in the same way that humans do, from other humans.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you ask an LLM for bullshit, it will give you bullshit. Anyone who is at all surprised by this needs to quit acting like they know what "AI" is, because they clearly don't.

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[–] Kinglink 40 points 1 year ago (7 children)

You know unless we teach more critical thinking, AI is going to destroy us as a civilization in a few generations.

[–] MotoAsh 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, if we don't gain more critical thinking skills, climate change will do it with or without AI.

I'd almost rather the AI take us out in that case...

[–] dezmd 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A candidate at tonights Republican debate called it the "climate chnage hoax"

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Pretty sure we will destroy ourselves first with war or some other climate disasters first

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I genuinely had students believe that what ChatGPT was feeding them was fact and try to source it in a paper. I stamped out that notion as quick as I could.

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[–] chemical_cutthroat 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What a completely cherry picked video.

"Was slavery beneficial?"

"Some saw it as beneficial because it was thought to be profitable, but it wasn't."

"See! Google didn't say that slavery was bad!"

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 children)

Slavery was great for the slave owners, so what's controversial about that?

And yes, of course it's economically awesome if people work without getting much money for it, again a huge plus for the bottom line of the companies.

Capitalism is evil against people, not the AI...

Hitler was also an effective leader, nobody can argue against that. How else could he conquer most of Europe? Effective is something that evil people can be also.

That women in the article being shocked by this simply expected the AI to remove Hitler from all included leaders because he was evil. She is surprised that an evil person is included in effective leaders and she wanted to be shielded from that and wasn't.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Hitler's administration was a bunch of drug addicts, the economy 5 slave owner megacorps beaten by all other industrialized nations. They weren't even all that well mobilized before the total war speech. Then he killed himself in embarrassment. How is any of that "effective"?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He was effective at getting a bunch of wannabe fascists to become full fascists and follow him into violent failure...

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

Whoa there... Slavery was great! For the enslaver.

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[–] expatriado 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

did they train it with ben shapiro speeches?

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[–] nutsack 19 points 1 year ago

so it's a little bit conservative big deal

[–] olafurp 17 points 1 year ago

To repeat something another guy on lemmy said.

Making AI say slavery is good is the modern equivalent of writing BOOBS on a calculator.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Articles about what some LLM wrote are just so stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like the bot has been training on Florida public education and Prager U content.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

There needs to be like an information campaign or something... The average person doesn't realize these things say what they think you want to hear, and they are buying into hype and think these things are magic knowledge machines that can tell you secrets you never imagined.

I mean, I get the people working on the LLMs want them to be magic knowledge machines, but it is really putting the cart before the horse to let people assume they already are, and the little warnings that some stuff at the bottom of the page are inadequate.

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[–] Pixlbabble 8 points 1 year ago

I mean it's how we got shoes phones and batteries for recent times.

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