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Has it occurred to you that _all_ model providers are actively trying to shape their models' replies to fit their preferred political narratives?
by rdbl27 2mo ago
Has it occurred to you that _all_ model providers are actively trying to shape their models' replies to fit their preferred political narratives?
- michaelhoney 2mo agoYes, but some narratives are more closely tied to the racist and regressive views of their current funder
- curtisblaine 2mo agoAnd some are more tied to the globalist and progressive-for-the-sake-of-progress views of their current founder. Why not let users pick their poison?
- gf000 2mo agoWho or what is this latter "globalist" view? Like it's such an oversimplification of multiple, independent actors' acts that it's just a plain bad world view/model. What would be the common goal? You need some extra amount of tinfoil for such bullshit.
- motbus3 2mo agoWhat does this reply mean? Since everybody does it, then it is ok?
- hnfong 2mo agoNo, but technically, all models go through an alignment phase where you feed data that's aligned to your goals and values to train the model so that it will exhibit the kind of behavior you want. There's no "politically neutral" value system anyway. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make the models more inclusive, less biased and less prone to extremism, but in a technical sense yes, actually everyone does it.
- ra 2mo agowhile this might be true for Grok, GPT and Claude I don't think tarring _all_ labs with this brush is demonstrably accurate.
- notfromhere 2mo ago[flagged]
- sroussey 2mo agoIt’s almost like some people do want to
- NonHyloMorph 2mo agoIt'd be minimally much money per token-intelligence (intelligence/token) though, if we are to believe the pitch..
- dpc_01234 2mo agoNah. My beliefs are actual truth, so if provider is shaping their models according to my preferred political narratives that's correct and only moral thing to do. Anything else would be morally bankrupt.
- brookst 2mo agoYou’re trying to be sarcastic but you would actually be insightful if your beliefs included the need to be challenged and corrected when in error.
- jesse_dot_id 2mo agoIt's not the preferred political narrative of the model that I worry about. It's how brazen they are about altering their models to achieve it. It makes me wonder what else they're altering. I have trust issues with OpenAI and Anthropic as well, but with those companies, at least I know their motives are purely profit driven. I don't have that assurance with xAI.
- rayiner 2mo ago> It's how brazen they are about altering their models to achieve it. We know all the models insert shadow prompts to nudge the answers in preferred political directions. How much more "brazen" can you get than that? Nobody is giving you fat-free results that just apply the models to your prompts.
- dominotw 2mo agoits not just one guys opinion though
- rayiner 2mo agoWho cares whether it’s one guy’s opinion or several people’s group think? Everyone is editing the prompts.
- nozzlegear 2mo agoObviamente people care when the one guy is notorious for having particularly shitty/edgy opinions.
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- ls612 2mo agoNah it never did because the other model providers' preferred political narrative is the same as his.
- breezybottom 2mo agoFeel free to elaborate. Which political narrative?
- awongh 2mo agoIt's interesting that all models seems to be unbiased out of the box so far- that is, mostly reflecting the training data (the internet). The whole mecha-hitler thing doesn't seem to reflect fine-tuning, it was just a prompt change. There's been some studies that suggest that certain usage of LLMs reduces political bias, which seems reasonable. Like, how credible is climate change, are Haitians eating pets, etc. THings that have a basis in fact. I don't put it past Elon to train a model with political bias, just that it hasn't happened yet.
- mvkel 2mo ago> It's interesting that all models seems to be unbiased out of the box so far This is really begging the question. If something relies on the perception of a human, it has bias. The data (or lack thereof) used to train models is per se a bias. The mistake is assuming bias-removal is some virtuous goal to be achieved. It can't, and shouldn't. Alignment, while equally impossible, is at least a goal worth aiming towards.
- hnfong 2mo agoI think the issue here is that there's no objective difference between "alignment" and "actively trying to shape its replies to fit a political narrative", beside the fact that the latter refers to the kind of political narratives that you don't like.
- mvkel 2mo agoHence the fool's errand that is "alignment"
- kennywinker 2mo ago> It's interesting that all models seems to be unbiased out of the box so far- that is, mostly reflecting the training data (the internet). Assuming models do accurately reflect the biases in their training data, that doesn’t make them un-biased.
- wilg 2mo agoMaybe, but some political narratives are good and right and true, and others are bad and wrong and false. (I am not joking: objective reality exists and most of politics isn't subjective.)
- Daz912 2mo agoThe left actively encourage ideological echo chambers as long as they're aligned with their own beliefs.
- sanmarzano 2mo agoYes. But only one trillionaire is screaming from twitter that he will use his wealth to combat the woke mind virus by tuning his model. So, ya know, there’s THAT.
- nullsanity 2mo agoYeah but their political narratives involving dehumanizing people, and hurting minorities - which is way worse. The attempt at false equivalence between traditional American propaganda and right wing American propaganda is disgusting.
- apical_dendrite 2mo agoFrom a business perspective, a company that trains it's LLMs to having boring, mainstream, generally-inoffensive views is a big selling point over whatever the hell Elon is doing.
- reinitctxoffset 2mo agoDrugs. Drugs are what Elon is doing. And it's pretty cringe. But it's remarkably similar in cringe to that little "secret erection" look Amodei gets when he talks about millions of unemployed people, or or Altman rolling through Pacific Heights in a four million dollar Swedish hypercar holding the steering wheel wrong the day after yet another lecture about UBI. It's all pretty goddamned embarassig.
- SturgeonsLaw 2mo agoWhy are the tech oligarchs all such dweebs...
- icepush 2mo agoYou only get to become one if the idea of spending 60 hours a week typing code into a computer during the late 90's/early 2000's is palatable to you. This causes a dweeb selection funnel.
- MithrilTuxedo 2mo agoThat's the claim, and it's a belief that's self-fulfilling prophecy, like saying all politicians are corrupt. If you can convince everyone that everyone is corrupt, it hurts anyone who isn't corrupt. You hear people preferring those who have no shame about their corruption, based on the premise that those who aren't overtly corrupt must be more sinister and dangerous if they hide their corruption so well. It's a race to the bottom.
- altcognito 2mo agoSuch a good point. Disinformation and trying to destroy sources of truth is just part of the puzzle. Often the worst damage is just "well, both sides are bad" -- because it just tells people not to listen to either side, or it is too much work. The end goal: they want to push that you must sacrifice your rights to a monarch or authoritarian person for order and safety.
- fauigerzigerk 2mo agoNo, that's not the same at all, because it is possible to be not corrupt while it is impossible to be unbiased. I think there are important differences between bias and dishonesty/propaganda though, and that's where your argument is still valid.
- brookst 2mo agoSure, but there’s the direction of a vector, and the length of the vector. xAI’s direction is hellish, and length is 100x any other provider’s. So, yeah, nobody is pure. But most are at least trying to be balanced and not just, you know.
- holoduke 2mo agoBased on what do you even know the direction of xAI? Because they want to go to space? Or defence contractors? Or nazi salute? Really what is it?
- realusername 2mo ago> Or nazi salute Maybe that's a clue yeah if you didn't get it otherwise... The previous version was so lobotomised, I saw people getting anti-immigration rambling just when asking to calculate percentages...
- holoduke 2mo agoThat nazi salute how do you actually know it was ment to show off as a Nazi supporter? I mean who is telling this? Or is that your assumption based on something?
- realusername 2mo agoWhat's the other possible explanation? He wanted to point out a spider at the ceiling?
- calgoo 2mo agoThere is also his namesake, his racist father and his grandfathers past. There is a lot of background information available if you really look for it. And finally, if you look at story of "The Elon" and what Elon has been building, you could almost think that he is trying to actually live up to his namesake!
- 2mo ago
- sandworm101 2mo agoNo. Other companies are altering thier products to chase market share and profits. Grok is run by someone beyond profit motives who is actively promoting a personal agenda. I would rather work with Microsoft's counsel of dark wizards than an individual with an axe to grind with the world.
- FranzFerdiNaN 2mo agoI prefer a model that is milquetoast liberal over one made by Elon 'Mechahitler' Musk.
- gf000 2mo ago"Reality has a liberal bias" . Sure, every author has a bias. But a fair selection of human written sources will be pretty balanced (of course, given the ratio of languages, surely western models will have a western-christian bias - presumably Chinese models less so, but this latter I have no way of checking). If you train specific stuff on top, or deliberately filter the sources (e.g. Tiananmen square), your model is deliberately less honest on that topic. Grok is probably the worst in deliberately filtering and training "out" specific stuff (to the point where Elon posted stuff that "they will 'fix' the models" real output when it said something true but remotely liberal). Claude and chatgpt definitely have some similar stuff, but mostly to protect themselves (e.g. suicide prevention, not saying slurs, etc). I don't think the two is comparable (reality bending vs basic etiquette-kind of not saying everything out loud)
- goekjclo 2mo agoChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have already been filtered. https://x.com/arctotherium42/status/2037324942069342679 https://x.com/arctotherium42/status/2037324942069342679
- kraf 2mo agoAnd it's all the same to you? You don't care which values those things have? Of course there will always be underlying values. I wouldn't go as far as calling everything political narratives. I think it's just pretty clear that Elon's values are not what most people want the world to be shaped by.
- asddubs 2mo agoThat's reductive, how many other models had a mecha hitler incident? Or a "let's talk about white genocide in south africa" incident? There is some truth to what you say, but most model providers I would say are engaged in CYA type shaping moreso than anything, grok is actively and openly being developed to spread a white nationalist agenda. There are levels to this.
- small_model 2mo agoIt has occurred to the OP, but those ones are ok as they fit OP's political leanings. They just want to silence other political narratives that dont agree with theirs, they want Grok in the Gulag.
- bamboozled 2mo agoNo it hasn't really and I've not noticed it?
- segmondy 2mo agoFalse, most are just throwing in data into the pipeline and hoping something very smart comes out the other end. Their shaping is to have it code very well, beat all the benchmarks and be safe enough that the powers that be don't and public sentiment doesn't turn against them.
- smrtinsert 2mo agoNo, because most model providers don't have an overt political agenda determined by one person. He literally promises to change specific political responses. Building on top of Grok will ultimately be as useful as buying TrumpCoin