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Arvind Narayanan

Arvind Narayanan
@random_walker

Mar 17
5 tweets
Twitter

"Don't anthropomorphize LLMs" is easier preached than practiced. I'm using ChatGPT-4 to create a paper title acronym. It gave me a few OK ones, but lots more permutations/synonyms were possible, so I wanted to ask it to generate ~50 options. But I couldn't bring myself to do it😬

My guess is that this is going to be a serious problem. Maybe ELIZA effect deprogramming will be an essential component of digital literacy from now on and should be part of the school curriculum. aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/people-keep-…
Companies and journalists both contribute to the confusion
aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/people-keep-…
People keep anthropomorphizing AI. Here’s why
Interesting suggestion by Ben Schneiderman in the HCAI Google group groups.google.com/g/human-center…
A particular concern that I have is the way GPT-4 output uses first person pronouns, suggesting it is human, for example: “My apologies, but I won’t be able to help you with that request.” The simple alternative of “GPT-4 has been designed by Open AI so that it does not respond to requests like this one” would clarify responsibility and avoid the deceptive use of first person pronouns. In my world, machines are not an “I” and shouldn’t pretend to be human.
While it's true that LLMs' use of first-person pronouns is not programmed in, it's equally true that it can be programmed *out* using RLHF. Language is infinitely flexible and there are many ways to express the same concepts without the pronoun. twitter.com/sir_deenicus/s…
Deen Kun A.

Deen Kun A.
@sir_deenicus

Mar 17
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f the criticism is an accusation that the model is "pretending". It is hard for humans to escape this language use. And as a language model, the suffix with highest probability to natural queries will (eg "can you") will begin with "I". This is not programmed in.
In fact, a simple prompt gets you most of the way there.
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Arvind Narayanan

Arvind Narayanan

@random_walker
Princeton computer science prof. I tweet about AI hype, social media platforms, tech ethics, & academic life. BOOK: AI Snake Oil https://t.co/lDq4qWiRaz
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