Google's AI-driven Search Generative Experience have been generating results that are downright weird and evil, ie slavery's positives.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 144 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • hideshow 16 child comments
  • [+] 48 points 3 years ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 23 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Your and @WoodenBleachers's idea of "effective" is very subjective though.

    For example Germany was far worse off during the last few weeks of Hitler's term than it was before him. He left it in ruins and under the control of multiple other powers.

    To me, that's not effective leadership, it's a complete car crash.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
  • [–] 8 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • load more comments (7 replies)
  • load more comments (8 replies)
  • load more comments (10 replies)
    [–] 75 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    People think of AI as some sort omniscient being. It's just software spitting back the data that it's been fed. It has no way to parse true information from false information because it doesn't actually know anything.

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • load more comments (6 replies)
    [–] 65 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 65 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years 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

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 48 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 41 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 40 points 3 years ago (7 children)

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

  • source
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] 23 points 3 years ago (1 child)

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

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 23 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    did they train it with ben shapiro speeches?

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 20 points 3 years 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!"

  • source
  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (13 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.

  • source
  • hideshow 14 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 3 years 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"?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • load more comments (7 replies)
  • load more comments (12 replies)
    [–] 19 points 3 years ago

    so it's a little bit conservative big deal

  • source
  • [+] 17 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
    [–] 17 points 3 years 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.

  • source
  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (2 children)
    load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 13 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Wtf are people expecting from a fucking language model?

    It literally just Mathematics you a awnser.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

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

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [+] 9 points 3 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
    [–] 8 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years 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 inaccurate aren't cutting it.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (5 replies)
    [–] 8 points 3 years ago

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

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›