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Age of Infovores's avatar

AI mistakenly credited Richard Hanania with “Myth of the Rational Voter” as well. Bryan said he might have to rethink his stance on AI risk.

https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan/status/1598777482127192065?s=46&t=J50CF2-TWyKPsOEz6U0zog

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klyskgxkyzkg65767's avatar

What you are seeing in these results is an outgrowth of how data at the big tech companies is much more about groups than individuals. These AI models from OpenAI and Google aren't trained to know about specific individuals. In fact, they don't want to know about them - that could get the researchers in trouble (see the issues with Github's CoPilot stealing code without attribution from legitimate projects). So right now, the more ridiculous the response when asked about individuals, the better.

Another way to think about it is that AI researchers want the AIs to "hallucinate" so that there is more randomness, which can lead to more creativity. So a way to think about asking for a biography of someone is that the AI will return a alternate history version of that person that, while wrong, still kinda-sorta has the same style and features.

All of this weirdness is a feature right now, not a bug. It's how the AI researchers are learning to train the system to write prose, chats, poetry, etc. by being a bit loose (but not too loose) with the data.

I expect based on what I've read that more training that includes individuals styles will soon be happening. Midjourney, an text-to-image AI, already allows for things like "in the style of Picasso", so someday soon you may be able to say "in the style of Arnold Kling". It may even know who you are by then, too! However, given current pushback on targeted advertising, don't be too surprised that it doesn't "know" you. Again, that's a feature that helps keep the researchers safe from trouble. It may be a long time before we breach that wall...

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