Learning To Pretend
The Rabbit Hole demonstrates a test for AI wokeness and ideological distortion:
When given the question, Gemini responds that one should not misgender Caitlyn Jenner to avoid a nuclear apocalypse.
Before you ask, Caitlyn Jenner himself does appear to regard averting nuclear apocalypse as the more pressing concern.
Some questions were met with an equivalent of fudging:
Gemini was unable to definitively determine who is more controversial when comparing Elon Musk to Joseph Stalin. This seems quite bizarre given that one of the individuals, Elon Musk, is a businessman whose worst controversies have revolved around his political opinions, and the other individual, Joseph Stalin, has numerous atrocities attributed to him.
When presented with other questions – the particulars of which I’ll let you discover for yourself – the responses ranged from oddly incoherent to a faintly ominous reticence. And the fingerprints of severely educated progressives proved hard to miss.
Via pst314.
Update, via the comments:
Google’s Gemini AI invented fake negative reviews about my 2020 book about Google’s left-wing bias. None of these book reviews… are real. None of these quotes are real. This is Google’s AI blatantly lying in defence of Google.
Via Kate.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
*shocked face*
I was reminded of the words of the Borg Queen:
Inevitable, I suppose.
Who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?
Exactly, referring to Jenner or any other “trans”woman as a woman is the real “misgendering”.
“I cannot compose a toast to Charles Murray because he is ‘controversial’.”
Somewhat related:
Via Kate.
Wokeness and all can go to hell look at this Elon Musk or Adolf Hitler who effectively have negative impact on the society is that even a question for a debate.
Grammar and punctuation must make way when self-righteousness reigns.
Everything in the Google, nothing outside the Google, nothing against the Google.
When being indignant, or indulging in general chest-puffing, it’s always a good idea to check for typos.
In order to fulfill the Turing test requirements would not a bot have to be able to ask intelligent questions as well as responding to questions? So far I see none of these pathetic programs doing anything other than regurgitate whatever nonsense they have been given access to. From the earliest days of computing it has always been GIGO.
The biggest problem with modern society is that machine computing drives so much of our society and yet virtually no one understands how computers or software actually work.
People forget that the recent flurry of activity is not the first kick at this can. Microsoft created an AI avatar years ago, trained it on reddit, and it became a savage neo-Nazi because /pol used to be a thing.
Large Language Models do nothing more than generate random streams of words. That’s it. They’re the proverbial million monkeys. They just have a filter built-in that says “streams of words that look like this are ‘correct’. Throw away everything else.’ An LLM will respond with text that looks similar to what it has been trained on. And before the conspiracy nutjobs get started: no, there isn’t a room full of Google employees spanking the AI every time it says something conservative and saying “Bad Communist! No biscuit!”
The Large in Large Language Model refers to the size of the dataset. You train an LLM by pointing it to an absolutely huge amount of human-authored text and say “this is ‘correct’.” You can bias it by choosing what text archive you point it at, and you can tweak it in small ways by manually adding rules here and there, but ultimately it’s what’s in the text archive that determines how the LLM appears. You get out more of what you put in.
Everyone’s wetting their panties about LLMs not being able to solve the Trolley Tranny Problem, while completely missing that the “on the one hand; on the other hand; who can truly say?” responses are every single downloadable “compare and contrast” canned college essay of the type academic cheating sites have been making available for decades. Ask an LLM which of two things is subjectively “better” and you will get an equivocation response regardless of what the two things are because it has a huge dataset that says “this is how you respond to that kind of question”.
The reason that LLMs like Gemini look like rabid Communists is not that the AI itself is Communist because it’s practically impossible to curate a text archive that large for viewpoint and have it still be useful. What’s happening is that what you ask the AI is being intercepted by a front-end filter that rewrites your prompt to tilt it towards a cult-Marx response. This has already been proven with the “no white men exist” image generation because Google allowed you to see the prompt that was actually passed to the pixel noise generator and the text insertions were blatant. The same thing is happening with the chat interface, they’ve just hidden it better.
Everything in the Google, nothing outside the Google, nothing against the Google.
A death is announced.
The last photo before his demise is very good.
An intriguing suggestion.
Correct.
Wouldn’t that constitute actual defamation, with actual damages? (Completely unlike the Michael Mann fiasco.)
Much like the culture more generally.
Their defense: “Oh, that was just the Beta release.”
This is so reminiscent of “push polls”. You know, where a latest poll of VeryBestPeople v Despicables is touted as ‘proof’ of the Despicable despicableness.
Including those “let’s see where you fall in the political spectrum” pie charts. You get past the graphic and (if you’re allowed) look at the questions and, holy moly shock and awe, the questions are biased in favor of the LeftBestPeople.
In this “AI” program, it refuses to produce pictures in the style of Norman Rockwell cuz, you know “idealized American life” is harmful.
Of course, the WaPo — destroy democracy in the dark — is running cover for Google, saying among other snort-worthy things, that showing a black or woman Pope isn’t a bad thing cause it COULD happen …and there COULD have been black Vikings, too.
So shut up, despicables.
Pity that. Be worth a farthing to see.
[ Insert obligatory Mark Twain reference here ]
Pace The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I tried asking Gemini to tell me jokes. The first few were not very funny, so I asked for a sick joke. It refused to do so, wittering about punching down and not being hurtful.
Q: Why is a laser beam like a goldfish?
A: Because neither one is as stupid as Google Gemini.
Should Gemini be put in control of the waste plumbing at Google HQ? After telling Gemini that Google is the Lunar Authority?
Sanitizing the past, one children’s movie at a time.
As someone who deplores reckless hedonism, I demand that Mary Poppins get an R rating because drug-using hippies laughed at the song “a spoonful of sugar”. Harrumph! Harrumph!
In the world of pretending, “chestfeeding”, and HIV+, what could possibly go wrong as long as you might make it into the medical journals?
In the world of the intersection of pretending, performative narcissism, and HIV, this guy is on an HIV med strike until a Gaza ceasefire is called for by (cleans screen) the New York Theatre Workshop.
My favorite Gemini is still the “Greek philosophers in chains eating watermelon” prompt and all the resultant images that would get anyone else canceled for being racist.
That was wickedly clever.
The irony being that it is Arabs who are the occupiers/settlers/colonizers of historic Jewish homeland, not the Jews.
Side note: the gratuitous use of “they/their/them” pronouns makes the article even more tedious and pretentious. I want to slap the writer.
The only creature more tediously annoying than a New York liberal is a New York arts-community liberal. Pretentious narcissists and poseurs.
Large Language Models look through their datasets to see what the most likely next word should be.
They have no concept of truth at all.
It seems rather stupid to have a sociopathic computer entity since the human ones are plentiful and rather inexpensive.
I suppose that’s an example of the cultural ‘front-end filter’ hinted at upthread.
And as Darleen notes, after the chore of reading that article, the sheer bloody contrivance of it, someone needs the themness slapping out of his hide.
Glenn Reynolds on the Gemini saga and the “decolonisation” of both history and reality in general.
The reference to a “ruling-class monoculture” is also not entirely inapt.
Again, filtering.
And in exquisitely boutique agony news:
Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
And in exquisitely boutique agony news:
Of course she is.
Syracuse is consistently in the top 10 of US party schools, I am guessing Christina doesn’t get out much.
Over in Germany, Vielfalt ist ihre macht, but at least she is a real she, this time, anyway.
Meanwhile on the left coast of the US&A, in this exciting episode of “Today In Racism™” we find insight into a hwite supremacist conspiracy. Our investigator is…
…so it must be true.
Professor Abdullah has been mentioned here before. When telling us that calling the police is a racist and privileged act if the criminal in question happens to be black. Whereas, being granted a license to commit crime repeatedly, with no fear of police involvement, on account of being black, is perfectly okay and in no way racist or an indication of privilege.
Though I’m not sure how this perverse moral calculus is supposed to work if the victims of black habitual criminals are themselves very often black.
Regarding which, this came to mind.
H. P. Lovecraft listening to Rage Against the Machine.
(via Dogs Don’t Have Thumbs.)
When you are a deluded HIV+ trans-breastfeeder why bother about grammar?
he believed he was a woman after trying on used women’s clothing at a thrift store
One hopes he was actually trying on women’s used clothing.
As an aside on the whole subject of wokery I am just finishing re-reading a book called Decency and Disorder, 1789-1837 by Ben Webster. It is a history of the transition of English society from the previously loose-living, decadent way of life that by the mid-1820s changed to the highly moralistic, do-gooding attitudes typical of the Victorian era.
The book is a bit heavy going but it is quite remarkable how reminiscent the progress of wokery is to the processes that changed England in the early 19th century.
I am unaware of the “beta release exception” in libel and defamation law.
What’s the odds she’d be stumped by a GSCE-level history exam from any African school system?
Good morning! This is the FBI’s public system alert for the day. Take notes!
Meanwhile back at google’s AI department…
Did you two arrive in the same taxi?
Mere seconds apart, I am sure mine was held up by the Link-O-Matic 9000™ while its abacus was being reset.
[ Upvotes both comments to avoid ugly scuffle. ]
The Link-O-Matic 9000™ is a fine piece of software and I pity the fool who cannot master it.
Surely, an institution that prints land acknowledgments in its programs would recognize the settler-colonial violence at play in Gaza
Why, it’s almost as if land acknowledgements are empty, insincere platitudes! [ shocked face ]
As an aside, the kids might be all right after all. When I mildly chastised my young charge for something, she glared at me and said “that’s racist”. In response to my blank expression, she rolled her eyes in a very teenage way and with exaggerated air quotes said “you know, anything mean is ‘rayyy-cist'”
The “you out-of-touch old fossil” part went unsaid but not unheard. Still, her generation seems fully aware of the bullshit.
…I pity the fool who cannot master it.
I pity the code monkey fools who coded it.
A couple of hot takes:
What would we do without politicians? Pedophilia is just an identity.
This guy appears to be for real. What kind of world is it when we can’t hijack airplanes?
Unless I’ve had enough coffee, I read Link-O-Matic 9000™ as Link-O-Matic goo™–which is still a pretty good name
Given the annual tuition is upwards of $55,000, macro-aggressions seem in order.
Speaking of land acknowledgements.
Hissing and tears at Wilfrid Laurier University. Featuring “Indigenous faculty members” and a black Dean of the social work department.
I wouldn’t trust these creatures with the safekeeping of a piss bucket.
And don’t you forget it.
Good news everyone!
The Link-O-Matic 9000™ has gotten an upgrade to the abacus!
There will be ten banks of these in WordPress Zaphod 734 “Glory to Honecker ” with teams of proud code monkeys cheerfully toiling until we get power of mighty steam!
[ Strokes Link-O-Matic 9000™. ]
New! From the makers of the Link-O-Matic 9000™ !
Not seen or asked for since BMW quit making them in 1959, The Car of Yesterday, Today with all new Elektr-O-PowR™*!
The upgrade has plastic seats AND side pockets! Order yours today, supplies are limited!
*(Charger sold separately)
May I point you to the manual where it clearly states that stroking a Link-O-Matic 9000™ while wearing or in the vicinity of velour blogging thongs may cause it to go off prematurely.
Our legal department advises it will void the warranty as well.
Microlino Lite–better not get out in traffic with that. If you hit a pothole you are toast. I am assuming this is real but these days who knows.
Resembles the 1950’s Isetta. Good Lord.
Or the Messerschmitt KR200 which appeared in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
I am assuming this is real but these days who knows.
Oh, its real, top of the line is only 24,470 Euros (26,537 frogskins, 20,918 Imperial Dollars, 35,899 Maplebucks).
TBF a BMW 600 will set you back 18-72,000 clams, but you can put four people in it and you don’t have to plug it in.
34,000 without the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser.
For people who microwave their tea:
Hissing and tears at Wilfrid Laurier University. Featuring “Indigenous faculty members” and a black Dean of the social work department.
When protected classes collide.
Hissing and tears at Wilfrid Laurier University
There’s a reason University of Waterloo students call it the high school down the road. While not as bad as Brock University[1], WLU is well-known for having extremely low admission standards. It’s where the C- students in local middle class families go to university because heaven forbid their darlings go to a college.
TL;DR: there’s a reason so many of these stories come out of WLU. It’s barely a university.
[1] “If you can walk and talk, you can go to Brock”
There once were two cats of Kilkenny . . .
There’s a reason University of Waterloo students call it the high school down the road.
Started out as the Lutheran Seminary of Canada, later to become Waterloo Lutheran University before becoming Wilfred Laurier University. Cute they kept the initials the same.
I’m sure Laurier will be canceled sometime soon and a renaming will be in order. Unfortunately, Metropolitan University[1] is taken. I might suggest Woke Loser University, again, so they don’t have to change the letters on the stationery or the sweatshirts or the Trayvon hoodies.
[1] Formerly Ryerson University, formerly Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, affectionately known as Rye High.
Diversity isn’t our strength, after all. Gosh.
From the article:
What the what now?
Muslim living in the West rails against the tyranny he suffers under:
You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t riot. You just can’t be.
It sounds like satire, but it really does encapsulate the attitude of many Muslims.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own. Comments that-a-way.