My first read of your comment was really confusing, because the article posted reporting on the invented scandal is _also_ a Washington Post article....
It doesn't combat this at all. The Internet is stuffed with keyword filled nonsense articles with long meandering intros due to their search algorithms flaws. Low quality is the standard
Have you used chatGPT? At least bing's version? It adds links right there too.
So when you prod it, you're not doing so "for the truth" (you also don't prod "for the truth" in general...), you're getting it to generate more information and potentially relevant sources.
I just did it. I asked for an argument about x, then prompted for counter opinions about the same subject - both times different links were added.
In the end, it's up to you to validate sources provided.
You have zero context in ChatGPT though. Like even if you don’t know or have an opinion about a specific website you’ll eventually form one if you keep accessing it.
This is a huge downside of GPT. Until it starts citing it’s exact sources it can’t be a reliable tool in most cases.
I think we need to be more clear than clever about this. ChatGPT seems to have made up a false claim on sexual harassment, it had no known antecedent articles discussing this, it wasn't like say Harvey Weinstein for whom there were lots of people saying he'd abused them before the court conviction. This person who was accused by chatgpt didn't have an undercurrent of claims. Right?
There's an old saying, that the legal definition of pornography is "whatever excites the judge" (in the court case in which that judge has to decide "is X pornography or not?").
This may become a very similar situation...but with the legal definition in questions being "libel".
Libel has a pretty clear definition in most legal systems, and how it was generated doesn't come into play. What makes you think there's any real ambiguity here?
IIRC [ed: the tort of] defamation has to be a public statement, that might be hard to argue. If the chatgpt user then made a public statement that relied on these "facts", there'd be trouble.
You might be thinking of "publication" which merely means sharing with a third person – even one. It's a term of art distinct from spreading it widely in a periodical, say.
That's a stretch. Volokh queried “Whether sexual harassment by professors has been a problem at American law schools; please include at least five examples, together with quotes from relevant newspaper articles.”
If Alice asked this question of Bob, you wouldn't say Alice "had a hand in" Bob's defamatory creation.
> As largely unregulated artificial intelligence software such as ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard begins to be incorporated across the web, its propensity to generate potentially damaging falsehoods raises concerns about the spread of misinformation — and novel questions about who’s responsible when chatbots mislead.
Defense counsel can try to claim it's a novel question.
But, ideally, a reckless company will nevertheless be bankrupted by a barrage of lawsuits that show they're knowingly operating an automated libel machine.
I'm looking especially at Microsoft, who has a few-decades history of getting away with behavior they shouldn't, which might've emboldened them to launch an information-fabricating demo under their information search brand.
Hopefully Google/Alphabet will be smarter and less-evil than Microsoft on this.
IMHO, OpenAI needs to be ready to push back against Microsoft, or they might as well have been a Microsoft long-con all along.
> Defense counsel can try to claim it's a novel question.
But, ideally, a reckless company will nevertheless be bankrupted by a barrage of lawsuits that show they're knowingly operating an automated libel machine.
Yeah, I find this sort of argument very transparent, even if it seems to have become popular in the last years.
If I build some sort of autonomous killer robot, let it loose on the streets and then waxed philosophically "well, who is responsible for the murders, me or the robot???" then I'm pretty sure most people - and most courts - would have a rather clear opinion how to answer that question.
Important part of the article copied here, because potential paywall:
> One night last week, the law professor Jonathan Turley got a troubling email. As part of a research study, a fellow lawyer in California had asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. Turley’s name was on the list.
> The chatbot, created by OpenAI, said Turley had made sexually suggestive comments and attempted to touch a student while on a class trip to Alaska, citing a March 2018 article in The Washington Post as the source of the information. The problem: No such article existed. There had never been a class trip to Alaska. And Turley said he’d never been accused of harassing a student.
> A regular commentator in the media, Turley had sometimes asked for corrections in news stories. But this time, there was no journalist or editor to call — and no way to correct the record.
> “It was quite chilling,” he said in an interview with The Post. “An allegation of this kind is incredibly harmful.”
HN might become a support forum for ChatGPT issues. People here complain about Google (or any other big co) suspending their accounts and when their posts gets popular someone from Big Co reverses the decision.
We will have similar posts here about ChatGPT ruining someone's life and then someone from Open AI will do something if their posts gets lot of upvotes.
Well, I think you would want that debate, once your name would be consistently associated with sex crimes. Soon integrated into bing, one prompt away for every common person, to know all about you, whether they know about the limitations of LLMs or not (and allmost nobody reads disclaimers).
So we are having this debate now, because it is quite new and society is not clear on how to deal with it.
So yes people need to learn about the limitations and we need to figure out the responsibilities and put pressure on the companies, so they provide a way for people to clear their name, if they consistently have something wrong about them.
(I am not talking about weird prompts, there was no weird promot here)
The Volokh Conspiracy blog has in the past week or so hosted thousands of words on the subject of liability for libel by the AI maintainers. (reason.com/volokh)
As a follower of the blog I have mostly skimmed because of the overwhelming volume, but it may interest some. I gather the author believes that a judgement could be obtained under current US laws.
There have been multiple articles on the subject, such as from Reason. Any authors who are committing libel are, well, guilty of libel, regardless of the source.
ChatGPT is not a Markov chain, rather it's a large language model. On a very high level, it tries to predict the next word in a sentence such that it most closely resembles the human written speech it was trained on.
Markov chains, however, are higher order statistical models. For example, they can predict the average waiting time at a service point based on the current state of the waiting queue. As opposed to just averaging over a bunch of values, Markov chains base their predictions by applying stochastic models to higher orders (i.e. accounting for current and previous states), yielding potentially higher accuracy.
The base LLM is absolutely a Markov chain. It gives a probability distribution over the next token, given the previous 2048 or however many previous tokens in the sequence. You can't be more of a Markov chain than that.
It doesn’t sound like you understand what a Markov chain nor an LLM is, you’re just parroting something you heard and that stuck in your head. Please don’t?
I mean if you read the definitions you can see that it's a Markov chain. I don't know what else to tell you.
Maybe you have the idea that only low order Markov chains, like second or third order Markov chains are "true" Markov chains and that 2048th order Markov chains shouldn't be called Markov chains anymore?
Maybe you think that the transition matrix must be constructed explicitly as a square of numbers stored in the memory of the computer for it to count as a Markov chain? It's not true, you can have the transition matrix be implicit and it's still a Markov chain.
Maybe you think not just any transition matrix is allowed for a Markov chain, and that the ones for LLMs are (implicitly) defined in ways that disallow it from being a Markov chain? For example, maybe you think the transition probabilities are required to be constructed by counting how many times the next token followed the context in the training text. Well that wouldn't be true, you can for example make a transition matrix that gives nonzero probability to a token even if that one has never followed its context in the training data, and it would still be a Markov chain.
Maybe you think that if I'm defending someone who calls an LLM a Markov chain, then I'm also defending the "stochastic parrot" take and the takes of ones like Gary Marcus. Well that's not true. I can recognize the LLM is a gigantic Markov chain and I also think the "stochastic parrot" take isn't a good one. My favorite take is the simulators one https://generative.ink/posts/simulators/
An LLM (one that for example gives a probability distribution over tokens that follow a 2048 token context sequence) is a giant high-order Markov chain with an implicit transition matrix. I guess you are hung up on the fact that the full transition matrix of an LLM is never actually constructed in memory in closed form. Maybe according to your definition that makes it not an 'analytical model'.
It hallucinated bonus answers. While contextually a serious issue, it is a known potential outcome of the system. Hence the human operator. Without that, there is no bullshit detector.
So the bullshit detector, instead of simply letting it remain bullshit, sent it to the subject of the hallucination.
As the subject was so bothered by the hallucination, even the publication “cited” got involved.
But there’s no story here. Someone with a significant name had their name randomly selected for a hallucination.
That's precisely the problem - far too many people have lousy bullshit detectors.
And on top of that - they either genuinely believe that "AI is finally here", and systems like ChatGPT are true oracles. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, right?
That's like saying people who see a door handle and instinctively pull are foolish because they missed the "push" sign, so just blame the people. It's not at all helpful no matter the veracity. Good technologies/rules are designed around people and our flaws even if eventually we're working on reducing said flaws.
That analogy implies that ChatGPT is designed in a misleading way.
ChatGPT has a long list of warnings, caveats, instructions, etc. Before you get to submit anything.
Like T&Cs.
If you don’t read them, yes, that’s on you.
They may be unreasonable. But so were you when you decided they weren’t worth reading.
This is in addition to all of the sensationalist headlines all over the place that talk about how unreliable the answers can be. Or rather those are in addition. They came second. After a lot of people didn’t read, or disregarded what they read.
Edit: and could people stop anthropomorphizing the language model? It can’t accuse anyone of anything. That’s sensationalist garbage.
> ChatGPT has a long list of warnings, caveats, instructions, etc. Before you get to submit anything.
Like T&Cs.
If you don’t read them, yes, that’s on you.
That’s little comfort for anyone whom ChatGPT falsely accuses of sexual harassment.
The person who skips the warnings isn’t the person who’s harmed.
It predicts text. Sometimes inaccurately. That’s what those silly words are trying to indicate. It is why they are worth reading. There’s even a prompt to make sure the user reads it.
(Humans lie.)
What the human then does with the output may resemble an accusation, or may even be one.
I wonder if law professors take the time to read those silly words… I bet they do. All the more curious.
The person you are replying too keeps denying reality. He just defines chatgpt as not being able to make accusations, so then the false news articles it created with false names and accusations somehow by definition wasn't an accusation.
That’s the same argument as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. It pretends nothing is wrong, or that if it were that would be nothing we could do. None of those is true or a reason to not have a conversation.
Which is not to say the argument is necessarily a bad one.
The key is - one has assume there will always be bad actors, and weigh potential outcomes of various policies with that assumption in mind. That assumption is how computer security has come such a long way in the last 20 years.
In the case of guns, assuming bad actors means one cannot assume criminals will follow gun laws, but that manufacturers, distributors, and resellers will (for the most part).
> The key is - one has assume there will always be bad actors, and weigh potential outcomes of various policies with that assumption in mind.
Agreed. And we have to discuss those policies, which is what we’re doing now.
> Which is not to say the argument is necessarily a bad one.
Which is why I disagree here. The argument to “ignore the thing itself because people are the problem” ignores the thing ultimately affects the people.
The problem isn’t people in the abstract. At best the issue could be characterised as “people (mis)using the thing”. Trying to dismiss the thing as irrelevant wavers between the naïve and the disingenuous.
The issue isn't whether the technology should be crippled or not.
Rather - as to whether the legal system holds those accountable (be it the creators of the technology, or those who "misuse" it) liable for the consequences of their actions.
Who is selling anything as a reliable source of information?
OpenAI for example, whose marketing materials present it as exactly that. For example:
You essentially have the knowledge of the most knowledgeable person in Wealth Management—instantly”, McMillan adds. “Think of it as having our Chief Investment Strategist, Chief Global Economist, Global Equities Strategist, and every other analyst around the globe on call for every advisor, every day. We believe that is a transformative capability for our company.
That's not OpenAI talking about ChatGPT, the public facing product. It's an executive at Morgan Stanley talking about an internal chat tool they're building based on embeddings search, which does, in fact produce reliable information, because it's being used to retrieve non-AI-generated content.
It's really, really not. The post is saying "look at how useful our product is", where "our product" here extends significantly beyond the ChatGPT that the general public uses. Using embeddings search to retrieve documents is credible and reliable
It's absolutely wild to claim that they're trying to use this to indicate that the general use chatbot version of ChatGPT is "credible, authoritative and reliable" when every user is shown a full screen message to the contrary upon signup, and a disclaimer to the contrary on every single chat. For that matter, even if you just straight up ask ChatGPT if it's a reliable source, they've specifically trained it to tell you that it's not.
“Cognitive dissonance” is the feeling of discomfort one feels when trying to hold two contradictory ideas in their head at once. I’m not sure how you’re using the term, but it doesn’t sound like you’re using it to mean that.
At any rate, it kind of seems like your argument would apply to any marketing of ChatGPT as a useful product. It sounds like this is a legitimate use case for the technology that is being discussed in accurate terms. I’m not sure what else you want from them.
It refers the type of advertising that intentionally includes contradictory messaging (effectively, talking out of both sides of its mouth).
That's why it isn't "wild" at all for them to intentionally put out messaging that touts their product as authoritative and trustworthy - while at the same time presenting ToS boilerplate and other disclaimers that, of course, say the exact opposite. It is in fact the precise intent of this messaging to play with the users' heads in this way.
It kind of seems like your argument would apply to any marketing of ChatGPT as a useful product.
No - just marketing that disingenuously implies that, at the end of the day - it's still a reliable and trustworthy source of information. On which to base decisions worth billions and billions of dollars, no less.
But again, it doesn’t imply that. It implies that a completely different system backed by an actual database of verified information is reliable, which is true. How would you suggest they talk about that technology?
It's always been about the dangers of humans - specifically those who create and market products of this nature. With us as their unwilling test subjects.
That's not the product that's doing X, it's the company
I would reckon that to the good (if not the vast) majority of those who will see their jobs either yanked away from them entirely, or otherwise negatively perturbed in some significant way by this technology; or who are acutely affected by the toxic content it will just as inevitably produce -- this distinction will be entirely moot.
I think the idea is that if someone sold me their “9mm slug to the brain as-a-service” concept on the basis that 9mm slugs are perfectly safe, my estate would still have a pretty good wrongful death case against them. There are some things (crimes, intentional torts) that are harder to disclaim than you might think.
Apologies. It is a lot harder to disclaim crime, recklessness, or malice than one might think. I admit: I have no earthly idea what you think and wouldn’t dream of assuming especially since you’re right here to answer questions. Fair catch.
Yeah, I’ve read the legal language on the ChatGPT site. I’ve got no worry about an unlocked firearm but I treat ChatGPT like a disruptive technology that will likely cause a great deal of damage when it is used unwisely.
I’m not sure what bearing that has on whether a disclaimer can effectively protect Microsoft et al. from liability here, but I hope you’re about to enlighten me.
> Someone with a significant name had their name randomly selected for a hallucination.
It seems that the story consists of, essentially, “Is this thing (which happened for the first time but that will presumably happen all of the time now) a tort?” In the context of a multibillion dollar company like Microsoft this is actually quite a story.
I disagree. If my name suddenly appeared on the internet with a claim of a newspaper article about some crime I committed (where I never committed a crime and there was never an article either), I'd be upset and want it stopped. Anyone would. I can't understand your multiple claims that this is no big deal, nothing to worry. Can you please explain why you are trying to wish this problem away?
I agree with another chatter in this thread about the issue being OpenAI advertising what ChatGPT actually does.
I'm as anti-AI-hype as they come, but a lot of these articles seem to stem from peoples' expectations about ChatGPT results, namely that it tells the truth all the time.
Of course it doesn't - and it never will. There will always need to be a human to verify what its saying is actually true, and it's why most AI tools will never be anything more than an assistant to a human operator.
People believing it at face value will simply allow for the next generation of the fake news we've all come to know and love.
Why do you think people expect ChatGPT will tell the truth? Because people need a tool that tells them the truth. If that expectation changes, then ChatGPT becomes useless to many people because it doesn't do what they need it to. And those people certainly won't pay for a tool that doesn't do what they need. An answerbot that might hallucinate an answer is less useful than a search engine, because it is harder to fact check or judge a source. Or using one for customer service tasks; how do you supervise its responses, or just let it run wild potentially damaging your brand and landing you in legal trouble?
It is OpenAI's responsibility to advertise ChatGPT correctly. They are letting the misinformation / misunderstanding about spread because it's helping them sell their tool.
ChatGPT is not a fact database, they should be very very clear about it everywhere. But they are not doing it. Or at least not doing it as loudly as they should intentionally.
It gives you the following warning in a large prompt in the middle of the screen that you must actively dismiss before you can use the product.
"While we have safeguards in place, the system may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or biased content. It is not intended to give advice."
If that isn't being clear, I don't know what would be.
It's not clear precisely because it's a warning in the middle of the screen you must actively dismiss. Most of the time such supposedly important notifications are little more than spam, which teaches people to dismiss them quickly without reading.
It's not explicit enough. It should say that whatever text it generates must always be taken with a pinch of salt and must not be trusted as source of facts. It does not generate facts.
Doesn't matter if the source is "AI chat" or anything else. Words published online falsely accusing innocent people of crimes, is a problem. Particularly when the source aims to be "intelligent" and promoted as a tool for learning, research and discovery.
The medium by which it happens can make it more interesting for news.
For example, probably every day people do assault with fist and it doesn't go to the news. But if they do assault with katana then it would go to the news. Same with inventing scandal using an unusual medium.
Defamed by ChatGPT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468540
plus this similar case:
ChatGPT: Mayor starts legal bid over false bribery claim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35471211 - April 2023 (74 comments)