After reading the comments (and the comments of similar posts) I can only assume people are being paid to claim torturing LLMs demonstrates a mental issue or homicidal tendency.
Nothing could be further from the truth. An LLM is a thing that’s programmed by humans to scrape the internet and present information in complete sentences. Torture is an incorrect word— it’s more accurate to say people are playing with an electronic toy or game by testing its limits and attempting to scramble the logic of an algorithm. In no way is that behavior an indication of a personality type or mental defect. The toy contains no shred of humanity or self-awareness. It is not a creature that can feel pain or confusion. There is no living thing to feel suffering. If curiosity leads someone to use a toy in a manner outside of the recommendations of its instruction manual, that is certainly not a violation against humanity— that is simply an example of creative play.
Don’t let billionaires set the narrative that something wrong or disturbing is happening. They will foment confusion to create yet another culture war to divide people.
If you’re seeking to prompt expressions of distress* from it for your entertainment, it kinda is a weird way to waste energy and water for personal gratification and I’d be worried why you’re so delighted by it, in the same vein that I’m concerned about people who love gratuitous torture scenes in games or movies.
Curiosity about the way the model handles such input is something else though, and frankly, I would consider that a reasonable part of any scientific inquiry into model behaviour*. The ethical concerns about human experiments don’t apply, nor do those about animal experiments, and testing the full range of linguistic “stimuli”* is perfectly sensible. Of course, the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down, but personal curiosity is also a good thing, so long as people remain aware of what they’re working with.
But anyone who feels the need to implement a Typescript compiler in Rust is a maniac and needs to be stopped
* Using human terms as metaphor, not because they’re equivalent but because it’s more convenient than variations of “sequence of numbers produced / consumed by a weighted random generator resembling…”
There is no something else. It makes sense a programmer will play with their electronic objects differently than someone outside the industry. It remains a toy to be played with.
Subscribing mental health or personality implications is just plain wrong.
I could just as easily suggest your insistence is an indication you have a personality disorder or inclination towards inhumanity for attempting to humanize objects. You’re attempting to suggest those who engage in play in this realm are criminal or psychologically affected.
More realistically, I’m debating with AI or a troll paid by people building data centers, but I do think it’s important for the average person who may read this to know that it’s impossible to torture a non-living object, even when it’s coded to respond in complete sentences like a person.
And we may have discovered a method to piss off billionaires and waste more of their AI money. In that case, I heartily recommend all to play as they wish with LLMs and open AI. Have nonsensical fun with it because nothing of value is being lost!!
It makes sense a programmer will play with their electronic objects differently than someone outside the industry. It remains a toy to be played with. Subscribing mental health or personality implications is just plain wrong.
If we’ll take the toy analogy, compare someone cuddling plush animals or playing make-believe to someone violently stabbing them with a knife. Sure, the plushy doesn’t feel anything so it doesn’t amount to torture, but they clearly have a different idea of “playing” if “playing violence” is fun to them. The “something else” here would be whether they do it for the fun of violence or for the curiosity of cutting them open to see what’s inside.
I could just as easily suggest your insistence is an indication you have a personality disorder or inclination towards inhumanity for attempting to humanize objects.
I’d think you misunderstood me: It’s not about the text generation models for me, which you’ll find I took care to point out are not human, and that the string of numbers they spit out that translates to an imitation of distress doesn’t actually represent distress but rather the result of a pseudo-random algorithm that just happens to resemble it.
More realistically, I’m debating with AI or a troll paid by people building data centers
Nah, I may have different takes on some nuanced issues, but I absolutely hate the slopidemic as much as anyone here.
I’ve been the odd one out in a group where we’d practice discussing current business topics (English being my second language and working in a German company means I didn’t have a lot of practice) by consistently picking news articles or scientific papers about the problems, shortcomings, the environmental destruction, the effect it has on coding skills, about Ford having to hire back its engineers when it turned out that AI couldn’t actually replace them…
It’s perfectly possible to disagree on nuances while still sharing a common overarching opinion. Point in case:
I do think it’s important for the average person who may read this to know that it’s impossible to torture a non-living object, even when it’s coded to respond in complete sentences like a person.
That’s why I emphasised that it’s not the action I’m concerned about, but the intention behind it. I don’t give a fuck about its mimicry of feelings, and I endorse comprehensive testing of its response to all manner of inputs. I explicitly noted the difference to animal testing for that reason: there is nothing unethical about feeding a text processor some particular string.
And we may have discovered a method to piss off billionaires and waste more of their AI money. In that case, I heartily recommend all to play as they wish with LLMs and open AI. Have nonsensical fun with it because nothing of value is being lost!!
The tradeoff being that we’re also wasting more energy, contributing to environmental destruction and padding the “growth” in usage numbers, which corporate shareholders clearly care more about than actual profits and may be used justify further investments into data centers. The models have no value, but the resources their gluttonous hosts devour do.
For pissing off billionaires, I think clogging the water supply of their data centers would be more productive. I’m sure you could also make a fun game out of finding ways to sabotage them directly.
I am almost continuously reminded of a tumblr post I saw about a college professor that brought in a pencil with googly eyes, did a little voice, then snapped it in half and told the class (of whom at least some gasped in shock) “we’re at that stage of AI right now”. And that post was years ago now. I know people are apes that pack bond and imprint on anything, but it’s getting ridiculous how many people don’t recognize it.
Worth remembering: people have also tortured dogs while insisting they only act like they feel pain. For as much as spicy autocomplete plainly is not alive or sentient… we gotta watch out for people who wouldn’t recognize if it was.
Well let’s temper our disappointment in people, it’s not like googly eyes are comparable to the LLMs ability to respond to human speech with incredibly lucid and more or less original responses. One can be forgiven I think for anthropomorphizing one and not the other. Particularly given how MUCH cultural thought and imagination has been bent toward the idea of thinking machines over the last couple of centuries. It’s deep down in the zeitgeist.
I may have expressed myself poorly, then, because my point was that people were anthropomorphizing the pencil with googly eyes just the same as they are now with AI. It’s not that I blame people for doing what they are innately, biologically programmed to do (form social bonds), it’s that people are so blindly against AI that they’ll accept wildly incorrect assumptions like (quoting a friend here) “they made an AI work a retail job and it wanted to kill itself” without examining what’s at play, like the people who were momentarily horrified that the professor snapped the pencil in half.
Unfortunately reading comprehension is on the decline. That makes it easier to redefine words like ‘torture’ on social posts, then using them wrong so often it becomes accepted usage.
Now if we add LLMs as something that can be tortured, it raises the value of AI but diminishes the value of human suffering.
It’s absolutely a deliberate attempt to control the conversation and devalue human life in the quest for AI dominance. In a short time we will be considered equals with AI. Later they will determine AI is more valuable than any single life. Then it will be any group of lives, and so on. In a few generations it will no longer be controversial to serve AI.
After reading the comments (and the comments of similar posts) I can only assume people are being paid to claim torturing LLMs demonstrates a mental issue or homicidal tendency. Nothing could be further from the truth. An LLM is a thing that’s programmed by humans to scrape the internet and present information in complete sentences. Torture is an incorrect word— it’s more accurate to say people are playing with an electronic toy or game by testing its limits and attempting to scramble the logic of an algorithm. In no way is that behavior an indication of a personality type or mental defect. The toy contains no shred of humanity or self-awareness. It is not a creature that can feel pain or confusion. There is no living thing to feel suffering. If curiosity leads someone to use a toy in a manner outside of the recommendations of its instruction manual, that is certainly not a violation against humanity— that is simply an example of creative play. Don’t let billionaires set the narrative that something wrong or disturbing is happening. They will foment confusion to create yet another culture war to divide people.
If you’re seeking to prompt expressions of distress* from it for your entertainment, it kinda is a weird way to waste energy and water for personal gratification and I’d be worried why you’re so delighted by it, in the same vein that I’m concerned about people who love gratuitous torture scenes in games or movies.
Curiosity about the way the model handles such input is something else though, and frankly, I would consider that a reasonable part of any scientific inquiry into model behaviour*. The ethical concerns about human experiments don’t apply, nor do those about animal experiments, and testing the full range of linguistic “stimuli”* is perfectly sensible. Of course, the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down, but personal curiosity is also a good thing, so long as people remain aware of what they’re working with.
But anyone who feels the need to implement a Typescript compiler in Rust is a maniac and needs to be stopped
* Using human terms as metaphor, not because they’re equivalent but because it’s more convenient than variations of “sequence of numbers produced / consumed by a weighted random generator resembling…”
There is no something else. It makes sense a programmer will play with their electronic objects differently than someone outside the industry. It remains a toy to be played with. Subscribing mental health or personality implications is just plain wrong. I could just as easily suggest your insistence is an indication you have a personality disorder or inclination towards inhumanity for attempting to humanize objects. You’re attempting to suggest those who engage in play in this realm are criminal or psychologically affected. More realistically, I’m debating with AI or a troll paid by people building data centers, but I do think it’s important for the average person who may read this to know that it’s impossible to torture a non-living object, even when it’s coded to respond in complete sentences like a person. And we may have discovered a method to piss off billionaires and waste more of their AI money. In that case, I heartily recommend all to play as they wish with LLMs and open AI. Have nonsensical fun with it because nothing of value is being lost!!
If we’ll take the toy analogy, compare someone cuddling plush animals or playing make-believe to someone violently stabbing them with a knife. Sure, the plushy doesn’t feel anything so it doesn’t amount to torture, but they clearly have a different idea of “playing” if “playing violence” is fun to them. The “something else” here would be whether they do it for the fun of violence or for the curiosity of cutting them open to see what’s inside.
I’d think you misunderstood me: It’s not about the text generation models for me, which you’ll find I took care to point out are not human, and that the string of numbers they spit out that translates to an imitation of distress doesn’t actually represent distress but rather the result of a pseudo-random algorithm that just happens to resemble it.
Nah, I may have different takes on some nuanced issues, but I absolutely hate the slopidemic as much as anyone here.
I’ve been the odd one out in a group where we’d practice discussing current business topics (English being my second language and working in a German company means I didn’t have a lot of practice) by consistently picking news articles or scientific papers about the problems, shortcomings, the environmental destruction, the effect it has on coding skills, about Ford having to hire back its engineers when it turned out that AI couldn’t actually replace them…
It’s perfectly possible to disagree on nuances while still sharing a common overarching opinion. Point in case:
That’s why I emphasised that it’s not the action I’m concerned about, but the intention behind it. I don’t give a fuck about its mimicry of feelings, and I endorse comprehensive testing of its response to all manner of inputs. I explicitly noted the difference to animal testing for that reason: there is nothing unethical about feeding a text processor some particular string.
The tradeoff being that we’re also wasting more energy, contributing to environmental destruction and padding the “growth” in usage numbers, which corporate shareholders clearly care more about than actual profits and may be used justify further investments into data centers. The models have no value, but the resources their gluttonous hosts devour do.
For pissing off billionaires, I think clogging the water supply of their data centers would be more productive. I’m sure you could also make a fun game out of finding ways to sabotage them directly.
I am almost continuously reminded of a tumblr post I saw about a college professor that brought in a pencil with googly eyes, did a little voice, then snapped it in half and told the class (of whom at least some gasped in shock) “we’re at that stage of AI right now”. And that post was years ago now. I know people are apes that pack bond and imprint on anything, but it’s getting ridiculous how many people don’t recognize it.
Steve.
Worth remembering: people have also tortured dogs while insisting they only act like they feel pain. For as much as spicy autocomplete plainly is not alive or sentient… we gotta watch out for people who wouldn’t recognize if it was.
Well let’s temper our disappointment in people, it’s not like googly eyes are comparable to the LLMs ability to respond to human speech with incredibly lucid and more or less original responses. One can be forgiven I think for anthropomorphizing one and not the other. Particularly given how MUCH cultural thought and imagination has been bent toward the idea of thinking machines over the last couple of centuries. It’s deep down in the zeitgeist.
I may have expressed myself poorly, then, because my point was that people were anthropomorphizing the pencil with googly eyes just the same as they are now with AI. It’s not that I blame people for doing what they are innately, biologically programmed to do (form social bonds), it’s that people are so blindly against AI that they’ll accept wildly incorrect assumptions like (quoting a friend here) “they made an AI work a retail job and it wanted to kill itself” without examining what’s at play, like the people who were momentarily horrified that the professor snapped the pencil in half.
Unfortunately reading comprehension is on the decline. That makes it easier to redefine words like ‘torture’ on social posts, then using them wrong so often it becomes accepted usage. Now if we add LLMs as something that can be tortured, it raises the value of AI but diminishes the value of human suffering. It’s absolutely a deliberate attempt to control the conversation and devalue human life in the quest for AI dominance. In a short time we will be considered equals with AI. Later they will determine AI is more valuable than any single life. Then it will be any group of lives, and so on. In a few generations it will no longer be controversial to serve AI.
To me, it’s sending a message that we don’t want that trash taking over our culture. Torture away!
It’s not torture. Using that term plays into the billionaire narrative.
I’m using it on purpose. Let’s call it what they want it called and do it anyway.
No, because I’d rather not normalize “torture” happening to something fake when people already don’t take torture very seriously.