Google’s AI-driven Search Generative Experience have been generating results that are downright weird and evil, ie slavery’s positives.

  • WoodenBleachers@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think this is an issue with people being offended by definitions. Slavery did “help” the economy. Was it right? No, but it did. Mexico’s drug problem helps that economy. Adolf Hitler was “effective” as a leader. He created a cultural identity for people that had none and mobilized them to a war. Ethical? Absolutely not. What he did was horrendous and the bit should include a caveat, but we need to be a little more understanding that it’s a computer; it will use the dictionary of the English language.

    • Bjornir@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Slavery is not good for the economy… Think about it, you have a good part of your population that are providing free labour, sure, but they aren’t consumers. Consumption is between 50 and 80% of GDP for developed countries, so if you have half your population as slave you loose between 20% and 35% of your GDP (they still have to eat so you don’t loose a 100% of their consumption).

      That also means less revenue in taxes, more unemployed for non slaves because they have to compete with free labour.

      Slaves don’t order on Amazon, go on vacation, go to the movies, go to restaurant etc etc That’s really bad for the economy.

      • Womble@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That really bad for a modern consumer economy yes. But those werent a thing before the industrial revolution. Before that the large majority of people were subsitance/tennant farmer or serfs who consumed basically nothing other than food and fuel in winter. Thats what a slave based economy was an alternantive to. Its also why slvery died out in the 19th century, it no longer fit the times.

      • L_Acacia@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Look at the Saudi, China or the UAE, it’s still a pretty efficient way to boost your economy. People don’t need to be consumer if this isn’t what your country needs.

        • Bjornir@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Those are very specifics examples, with two of the biggest oil producers, and the factory of the world. Thus their whole economies is based on export, so internal consumption isn’t important.

          Moreover what proof do you have their economies wouldn’t be in a better shape if they didn’t exploit some population but made them citizen with purchasing power?

          • L_Acacia@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            2/3 of the people living in the Saudi Emirate are immigrants whose passports have been confiscated, they work in factory, construction sites, oil pit, and all other kind of manual jobs. Meanwhile the Saudi citizens occupy all the well paid job that require education, immigrants can’t apply to those. If they didn’t use forced labor, there simply wouldn’t be enough people in the country to occupy all the jobs. Their economy could not be as good as it is right now.

            • Bjornir@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Because their GDP comes from exporting a very rare and valuable natural resource. This is a rare case in the world, and not the one I was talking about.

              Plus who’s to say they wouldn’t have a better economy if those exploited people could consume more?

    • Sentrovasi@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think the problem is more that given the short attention span of the general public (myself included), these “definitions” (I don’t believe that slavery can be “defined” as good, but okay) are what’s going to stick in the shifting sea of discourse, and are going to be picked out of that sea by people with vile intentions and want to justify them.

      It’s also an issue that LLMs are a lot more convincing than they should be, and the same people with short attention spans who don’t have time to understand how they work are going to believe that an Artificial Intelligence with access to all the internet’s information has concluded that slavery had benefits.

      • livus@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Your and @WoodenBleachers’s idea of “effective” is very subjective though.

        For example Germany was far worse off during the last few weeks of Hitler’s term than it was before him. He left it in partial ruins - and under the control of multiple other powers.

        To me, that’s not effective leadership, it’s a complete car crash.

          • livus@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            He was able to convince the majority that his way of thinking was the right way to go and deployed a plan to that effect

            So, you’re basically saying an effective leader is someone who can convince people to go along with them for a sustained period. Jim Jones was an effective leader by that metric. Which I would dispute. So was the guy who led the Donner Party to their deaths.

            This is why I see a problem with this. You and I are able to discuss this and work out what each other means.

            But in a world where people are time-poor and critical thinking takes time, errors based on fundamental misunderstandings of consensual meanings can flourish.

            And the speed and sheer amount of global digital communication means that they can be multiplied and compounded in ways that individual fact checkers will not be able to challenge sucessfully.

            • ScrimbloBimblo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              I mean Jim Jones was pretty damn effective at convincing a large group of people to commit mass suicide. If he’d been ineffective, he’d have been one of the thousands of failed cult leaders you and I have never heard of. Similarly, if Hitler had been ineffective, it wouldn’t have takes the combined forces of half the world to fight him.

              • livus@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Huh? Yikes this feels like being back on reddit.

                No I am not trying to “fight” you or “straw man” you at all!!!

                I thought we were having a pleasant and civilized conversation about the merits and pitfalls of AI , using our different ideas about the word “effective” as an example.

                Unfortunately I didn’t see that you’re handing me downvotes until just now, so I didn’t pick up on your vibe.

  • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Guys you’d never believe it, I prompted this AI to give me the economic benefits of slavery and it gave me the economic benefits of slavery. Crazy shit.

    Why do we need child-like guardrails for fucking everything? The people that wrote this article bowl with the bumpers on.

    • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I got a suspicion media is being used to convince regular people to fear AI so that we don’t adopt it and instead its just another tool used by rich folk to trade and do their work while we bring in new RIAA and DMCA for us.

      Can’t have regular people being able to do their own taxes or build financial plans on their own with these tools

  • SqueezeMeMacaroni@thelemmy.club
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    1 year ago

    The basic problem with AI is that it can only learn from things it reads on the Internet, and the Internet is a dark place with a lot of racists.

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If it’s only as good as the data it’s trained on, garbage in / garbage out, then in my opinion it’s “machine learning,” not “artificial intelligence.”

    Intelligence has to include some critical, discriminating faculty. Not just pattern matching vomit.

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We don’t yet have the technology to create actual artificial intelligence. It’s an annoyingly pervasive misnomer.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And the media isn’t helping. The title of the article is “Google’s Search AI Says Slavery Was Good, Actually.” It should be “Google’s Search LLM Says Slavery Was Good, Actually.”

    • profdc9@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately, people who grow up in racist groups also tend to be racist. Slavery used to be considered normal and justified for various reasons. For many, killing someone who has a religion or belief different than you is ok. I am not advocating for moral relativism, just pointing out that a computer learns what is or is not moral in the same way that humans do, from other humans.

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You make a good point. Though humans at least sometimes do some critical thinking between absorbing something and then acting it out.

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    If you ask an LLM for bullshit, it will give you bullshit. Anyone who is at all surprised by this needs to quit acting like they know what “AI” is, because they clearly don’t.

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I always encourage people to play around with Bing or chatGPT. That way they’ll get a very good idea how and when an LLM fails. Once you have your own experiences, you’ll also have a more realistic and balanced opinions about it.

  • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You know unless we teach more critical thinking, AI is going to destroy us as a civilization in a few generations.

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, if we don’t gain more critical thinking skills, climate change will do it with or without AI.

      I’d almost rather the AI take us out in that case…

    • dukeGR4@monyet.cc
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      1 year ago

      Pretty sure we will destroy ourselves first with war or some other climate disasters first

      • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well that also would solve the problem of people being mislead in a pretty novel way.

    • Sentrovasi@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I genuinely had students believe that what ChatGPT was feeding them was fact and try to source it in a paper. I stamped out that notion as quick as I could.

      • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        LOL. ChatGPT has become the newer version of wikipedia, only it won’t provide references.

        • stopthatgirl7@kbin.socialOP
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          1 year ago

          Only studies have shown Wikipedia is overall about as truthful and accurate as as regular encyclopedia. ChtGPT will straight up make shit up but sound so authoritative about it people believe it.

    • Scrof@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      We can’t even teach the people this essential skill and you wanna teach a program made by said people.

      • Kinglink@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think you misunderstood me. We need to teach the general populace critical thinking so they can correctly judge what we get from ChatGPT (or Wikipeida… or social media, or random youtube video).

    • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m more worried that happy educated citizen stops being an asset and is disconnected from the societies money flow.

      Every country will soon turn in to a “banana republic” and big businesses will eventually own everything.

      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ouch, getting voted down for being totally correct.

        Even MLK Jr, who didn’t get to see the disgusting megacorps of today, spoke often of the complacency of the comfortable.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    Slavery was great for the slave owners, so what’s controversial about that?

    And yes, of course it’s economically awesome if people work without getting much money for it, again a huge plus for the bottom line of the companies.

    Capitalism is evil against people, not the AI…

    Hitler was also an effective leader, nobody can argue against that. How else could he conquer most of Europe? Effective is something that evil people can be also.

    That women in the article being shocked by this simply expected the AI to remove Hitler from all included leaders because he was evil. She is surprised that an evil person is included in effective leaders and she wanted to be shielded from that and wasn’t.

    • mimichuu_@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Hitler’s administration was a bunch of drug addicts, the economy 5 slave owner megacorps beaten by all other industrialized nations. They weren’t even all that well mobilized before the total war speech. Then he killed himself in embarrassment. How is any of that “effective”?

    • Bondrewd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Actually, slavery in its original form is also a net positive. You just murdered half a tribe. You cant let the other half just live. Neither do you want to murder them. Thus you will enslave them.

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So you create a problem by murdering half a tribe, then offer a solution. That’s not a net positive.

        • Bondrewd@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You might be lacking basic understanding of tribal politics and economics then. In a tribal setting you have to neutralise the other tribe, as you do not have a standing army. Any conflict you get into, you are “conscripting” your entire male population.

          In every kind of tribal conflict ever, regardless of having the moral upperhand, it was a bogstandard way of conduct. You dont have men to be stationed in enemy territory, that is the manpower that is NEEDED in the fields the second its time to sow or reap, so you dont fucking starve.

          So any conflict comes around, you need to make sure that once its over, you will be left the f alone. You have to really hit it home. Maybe thats not obvious, but the clans in this context are probably not NATO or even UN members. :)

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To repeat something another guy on lemmy said.

    Making AI say slavery is good is the modern equivalent of writing BOOBS on a calculator.

    • joel_feila@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      A few lawyer thought chat gpt was a search engine. They asked it for some cases about sueing airlines and it made up cases, sited non existing laws. They only learned their mistake after submitting their finding to a court.

      So yeah people dont really know how to use it or what it is

    • Lt_Cdr_Data@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      And acting like there are no upsides is delusional. Of course there are upsides, or it wouldn’t have happened. The downsides always outweigh the upsides of course.

  • lud@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Articles about what some LLM wrote are just so stupid.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Sounds like the bot has been training on Florida public education and Prager U content.