this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
698 points (92.7% liked)
Technology
59421 readers
4793 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So if someone used an LLM in this way in the real world, does it matter that it has no intent, etc? It would still be resulting in a harmful thing happening. I'm not sure it's relevant what internal logic led it there
You can't use an LLM this way in the real world. It's not possible to make an LLM trade stocks by itself. Real human beings need to be involved. Stock brokers have to do mandatory regulatory trainings, and get licenses and fill out forms, and incorporate businesses, and get insurance, and do a bunch of human shit. There is no code you could write that would get ChatGPT liability insurance. All that is just the stock trading -- we haven't even discussed how an LLM would receive insider trading tips on its own. How would that even happen?
If you were to do this in the real world, you'd need a human being to set up a ton of stuff. That person is responsible for making sure it follows the rules, just like they are for any other computer system.
On top of that, you don't need to do this research to understand that you should not let LLMs make decisions like this. You wouldn't even let low-level employees make decisions like this! Like I said, we know how LLMs work, and that's enough. For example, you don't need to do an experiment to decide if flipping coins is a good way to determine whether or not you should give someone healthcare, because the coin-flipping mechanism is well understood, and the mechanism by which it works is not suitable to healthcare decisions. LLMs are more complicated than coin flips, but we still understand the underlying mechanism well enough to know that this isn't a proper use for it.
You say can't... Humans have done dumber shit.
The point they are making is actually aligned with you I think. Don't trust "ai" to make real decisions
Regardless of their conclusions, their methodology is still fundamentally flawed. If the coin-flipping experiment concluded that coin flips are a bad way to make health care decisions, it would still be bad science, even if that's the right answer.