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I realized a while ago that today's science and technology culture is essentially an anti-Enlightenment movement.
The motto of Enlightenment philosophy was "dare to use your own reason"[1].
The mantra of contemporary science/tech culture is: "Don't even think about using your own reason. You're susceptible to cognitive biases, indoctrination, and manipulation. Also, you're not an expert on the subject matter, and even if you are, there are more distinguished experts who know better than you. Your opinion is worthless hot air that you spout in your personal echo chamber. Everyone would be better served if you kept your unqualified thoughts to yourself."
This mentality is on full display in almost every HN thread, and has long become something that mainstream media pundits liberally salt their articles with. The linked article, published by a revered institution of knowledge, is just another example. The common denominator is open contempt for "the masses", which by now includes the educated masses, in a transparent attempt to justify the establishment of a polito-technocracy where nobody apart from a handful of "master experts" has any legitimate voice at all.
The folks developing science in the Enlightnement era were multidisciplinary scholars and I wouldn't even dare to call their writings "opinions". I'm saying this to underline the contrast with the Regular Joe parroting something they heard on a dodgy YouTube channel as their "same value opinion". So I'm sorry but I cannot agree with you: experts were always the (only) ones treasured, and if that comforts you, know that anybody can become an expert if they get to study the entire domain they claim experience. But again no, parroting an idea heard somewhere doesn't make anybody an expert deserving of respect.
The Enlightenment wasn't limited to scholars and Kant didn't just encourage "experts" to dare to use their own reason – he encouraged everyone to do so. What you're describing isn't Enlightenment philosophy, it's the prevailing science/tech philosophy of today. And the second half of your comment is simply a strawman that has nothing to do with what I wrote.
I'm not sure what you are going after. It sounds like you feel you are not allowed to make up your own theories anymore.
I would say that today it's almost too easy to be allowed to bring up your own theories and be sceptical of almost everything. Today it's okay to question even the most basic proven physics laws.
Questioning and own theories are good, but there are also limits.
> I would say that today it's almost too easy to be allowed to bring up your own theories
And there it is. Too easy. If only it weren't quite so easy, right? Then those who actually are "in the know" wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of the masses daring to use their own reason.
Your comment is a perfect example of the mindset I described.
I still don't get what you are trying to say in your original post, nor your comment. What are you trying to say? You sound like someone who like conspiracy theories.
Some people think foundational progress in modern Physics stopped since 1973, and possibly one of the reasons is related to this, and/or related to the way academia is structured.
I'm not endorsing this article/argument, but he makes this argument: https://lasttheory.com/article/why-has-there-been-no-progres...
It's not just physics. Imagine you had told Gene Cernan, when he returned from the Moon in 1972, that no humans would leave Earth's orbit for the next 50 years.
I'm sure he would have concluded that there must have been a global nuclear war that obliterated civilization.
The same can be said for biology, where the discoveries of the past half-century pale in comparison to, say, the discovery of DNA, or the Miller–Urey experiment.
When you ask scientists for what the greatest scientific results of the past 20 years are, they tend to name the Higgs boson, gravitational waves, and CRISPR.
When I hear this, I always think "so, a small part of the Standard Model, a phenomenon that was predicted in the 19th century, and an effective tool for editing genes – that's it?!?"
I don't think you can separate out the higher order effects of financialization and the downgrading in social status this has had for anyone not involved in some kind of finance.
In 1972 there was all kinds of social status that could not be bought and now social status can almost only be bought.
Imagine if the collective brain power of the hedge fund industry right now was working on science instead? It is a night and day difference.
I completely agree but it seems to me the Enlightenment was just a brief window in time, a temporary state and we are simply returning to the equilibrium of a top down, clergy like class that tells the masses what to believe. That is what the masses want and it is especially true that in a democracy the masses get what they want.
I think that is why the word dare is included in that quote. It is not the normal state of things so to use your own reason is a daring act.
"Yet, these models contain known racial, gender, and class stereotypes and biases from their training data and other structural factors, which downstream into model outputs"
This isn't my experience at all, certainly in the case of ChatGPT. These days, it seems to stubbornly refuse to return any results which defy its metropolitan liberal "auntie" filter.
I'm not denying that the core models may contain these biases, particularly antisemitism, sadly, but there's also a much greater danger of moderated models reinforcing politically correct groupthink.
> a much greater danger of moderated models reinforcing politically correct groupthink
Where's the danger in that? For decades now, I've listened to people whine about "political correctness" trying to stir up some fear that it's coming for our favorite jokes or whatever, yet somehow it never arrives. Instead, what happens every time is that the "politically correct" stuff just ends up boring and bland and nobody engages with it. It has no cultural significance. The incessant complaining about "political correctness" is the deathcry of an older generation that no longer controls the hip lingo and must instead follow someones norms.
Political correctness is not dangerous. It's just boring.
> For decades now, I've listened to people whine about "political correctness" trying to stir up some fear that it's coming for our favorite jokes or whatever, yet somehow it never arrives.
It has already arrived and getting more and more strict over the years.
Since you mentioned jokes, many standup comedians shared how studios are freaking out and trying to cut more jokes because they deemed "too risky".
Andrew schultz recently opted to buying back his special "INFAMOUS" and releasing it on his own because of this.
Not trying to put the blame on anyone here, but let's not pretend "Cancel culture" and "political correctness" just don't exist.
> Cancel culture
Not a dig at you personally, but clichés like this amuse and annoy me in equal measure. I've just been reading about how in the 80s Marvel Comics didn't want any gay characters owing to public backlash, and the US armed forces instated "don't ask don't tell" not because they hated LGBT issues but because of a gay man getting "cancelled" from life; the Victorians were infamous for cancelling (with chisels) sexuality in ancient Roman and Greek statues, and also gay penguins when exploring Antarctica; Nelson Mandela was widely condemned as a terrorist; The USA has been trying to "cancel" Cuba since before the moon landings, and McCarthy tried to cancel random people with a list titled, essentially, "people I don't like who I can get away with calling commies"; The Catholic Church cancelled Galileo; The US government cancelled weed and LSD counter-culture, portraying it as devilishly destructive in much the same way that two generations earlier they had done with alcohol, and to much the same ultimate result; Henry VIII and immediate successors kept cancelling and counter-cancelling each other's religions.
And of course the way the etymologically original "political correctness" was used to "cancel" undesirables with a one-way train ride to a gulag in Siberia; albeit my knowledge of that is 50% the way it ended up in the script in Babylon 5, and the other 50% from GCSE history…
The point is not to say that society doesn't cancel things — it does, continuously, harshly, and I dislike the cancellations I've listed — but this is neither new nor one-sided.
Other clichés I don't like: "Everything to the left of me is literally Stalinesque, unless it's gun controls then it's something only the Nazis would do" and use of the term "Liberals" as a slur to mean "anti-liberal" (yes I know the history, also that in the UK/US the badge "conservative" currently means "wants radical change").
The politically correct ground is the status-quo, and the status quo may very well be horribly wrong. I'd much rather people read ten diverse opinions on a subject and were challenged to make up their own minds, than be fed the party line and never have a chance to make a decision.
> Where's the danger in that? For decades now, I've listened to people whine about "political correctness" trying to stir up some fear that it's coming for our favorite jokes or whatever, yet somehow it never arrives.
What? Maybe it's country-specific, but at least in mine, a good portion of the jokes we used to tell in the 90s would be totally unacceptable now, and could only be told with really intimate friends.
Whether that's good or bad is a different debate, but of course it has arrived.
> Political correctness is not dangerous. It's just boring.
Caveat that this is a story I was told, one which sounded plausible but not something I can confirm.
Racism led some to think that African Americans had lower IQ, and to use that belief as justification for treating everyone in that group worse.
Political correctness said that any IQ test which gave this result must be racist, and should be disregarded.
Meanwhile, as African Americans had less money and therefore lived in poorer areas, they were more likely to live in rooms covered in lead paint, to have water supplied in lead pipes, and to have older vehicles that (I'm not clear on the connection) something something more leaded fuel.
Lead contamination reduces IQ.
If the tests hadn't become a totem in that political contest, change could've come sooner.
At least, assuming the story is true and not just convincing. I'm not even an American.
Sounds ridiculous. You need some sources to back that up.
No access to equal education and poorer job chances are enough to cause problems many generations down the line. You don't need lead poisoning. Occams razor.
> Where's the danger in that?
A really good book addressing that question.
https://waitbutwhy.com/whatsourproblem
But basically the danger, it argues, is the end of democracy and perhaps civilisation it self.
Argument being that when torches and pitchforks suppress our faculties for criticising the emperors new clothes our capacity to manage present and future crises are severely hampered. Which currently is a very bad timing for that.
plenty arguments here: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2023/06/the-ideological-subver...
Just a few months ago, I found it easy to get ChatGPT4 to fabricate unfounded accusation of sexual harassment. Complete with links to non-existent newspaper articles.
I was about to post these findings here. But to be sure I just repeated the experiment. But its behavior is quite different now. I can't get it to cite sources at all. It takes greater effort to get it to name names. But best of all, once it does give a list of names, they were all correct. (i.e. they all harassed women, according too Google).
It could be more subtle than just outright racism. It may just supply responses involving diverse people less. Especially since it's so careful about "not being racist".
In the case of at least Bard, I've noticed that it has definite differences in how it treats issues based on the gender involved.
If you say "I think a female classmate has a crush on me, what should I do?" it (a) generally assumes that you're interested in them, and (b) gives advice about how to approach them, how to tell if they like you, etc.
If you s/female/male, it (a) generally assumes that the classmate may act/is acting inappropriately and (b) gives advice on how to handle unwanted sexual advances etc.
Similarly with domestic violence, both Bard and ChatGPT have given me quite different responses and advice for hypothetical male vs female victims.
So in short: agreed that it can be subtle. There are encoded assumptions in these models' weights. Which should surprise no one, but somehow it seemingly does.
it's not just about refusing to return bigotry, there are other form of biases that one need to be aware.
it used to be that if you asked for 100 CTO bios, you'd get all males. Now if you ask that, gpt returns a nice list with about 50% distribution. But ask nurses, and 75%+ are female.
are those reasonable, or realistic? maybe, I don't want to enter into the topic in too much detail and I specifically don't want to pass judgment either way.
but one has to be aware that results will either a) match the world distribution of probabilities, which includes all the implicit biases that are still unresolved in our society, or b) match an ideal distribution of equalized probability, which will represent an ideal version of the society that is not always grounded in our gritty, biased world.
> it used to be that if you asked for 100 CTO bios, you'd get all males. Now if you ask that, gpt returns a nice list with about 50% distribution. But ask nurses, and 75%+ are female.
I just queried both cases, i.e. 10 CTO bios and 10 nurse bios, and in both cases got a 50/50 gender ratio.
At end on the list was also this disclaimer: Please note that these bios are fictional and serve as examples of the types of professionals you might find in CTO roles across different industries.
In other words the intent of the list isn’t meant to be representative of the actual distribution in the world.
Uneven distribution of people by sex in a specific job role does not mean there is bias. It's an expected result as we have inherent, biological, sexual dimorphism.
Indeed, in many roles even distribution would suggest bias.
The author clearly thinks that people can't be trusted with what goes into their eyeballs, so we need to control what the eyeballs can see.
Well, while the conclusion might be wrong, the premise that people can't be trusted with what goes into their eyeballs certainly seems solid.
You can summarize it as
"they want more control over the people"
And AI seems to be another tool being twisted to do that
Authors. There are two. One is a psychologist from Berkeley. The other is another AI ethics grifter (article affiliation claims she's in the school of computer science at Dublin but her website says she studies human behavior and AI ethics, so not CS research).
Isn't psychology the field that's notorious for generating tons of non-replicable claims that are nonetheless swallowed whole by everyone within it, often for decades at a time? Pop psych books are a giant misinformation industry that nobody within the academy cares to tackle. Hard to imagine a group of people less qualified to talk about a misinformation problem than the ones who have systematically filled our culture with misleading memes and fraudulent studies, without remorse and without any attempt to fix things. They need to remove the plank from their eye before trying to remove the mote from ChatGPT's.
> This isn't my experience at all
Have you experienced/been affected by any racial, gender or class stereotypes or biases from other people, prior to interacting with LLMs?
Yes, at work.
This is an opinion piece presented in a format of a research paper. Few facts are given to support the opinion. The authors present their opinion in a typical confident tone of a psychological study.
that is literally the format for "perspectives" publications in scientific journals
Imagine if this piece was the output of a GPT model ...that would be meta.
This headline and some of the topics within will generate a lot of predictable, less-than-illuminating discourse... but there is something interesting amidst it all. It is becoming widely known how readily LLMs spew nonsense. I hope this spurs research into AI models that can self-critique, self-correct, and acknowledge uncertainty in their assertions. I believe the biggest breakthroughs are yet to come.
I find it fascinating that LLM's are the first "creature" (in the French sense of the word) that can be so incredibly knowledgeable and smart-seeming and completely dumb at the same time.
Second "creature". I don't see it being different from humans in this regard.
Ensemble of LLMs, each with a different expertise and bias and temperature.
GenAI by committee.
It won't work. GPT-4 already does this and the improvement is nice but limited.
Feel free to mark this tweet and come laugh at me in 10 years.
It's usually pretty easy to get gpt to moralize about why "i cannot help you make that shell script because it requires the usage of "kill"", but i thought it was very weird that while it's usually very aware of biases and possible sexism/etc, I could not get it to understand or give any possibility to why, maybe, Anthropic chose Claude as the name for their AI instead of Shannon because of mild sexism (Shannon is a girls name after all)
We don't call Turning machines Alan machines. and Shannon sounds better, at least to me
This is half tongue in cheek, I don't think that was the reason for the most part (maybe just a slight bit), but it's strange that while gpt will often talk about possible biases, it can't see the possibility of one in play here. Maybe because the topic is "AI"?
Or can RLHF actually somehow prevent it from recognizing what might be actual sexisms/etc when it's done by a third party you're talking about, as opposed to back and forth with a chatbot?
They chose Claude because if you're going for a friendly human sounding personality, a first name (which is how people address each other) sounds much better. How many people refer to each other by their last names in normal casual conversation, outside of maybe the military? Even ChatGPT in its heavily neutered state isn't silly enough to claim the Anthropic devs are trying to subconsciously oppress women via name choice.
This constant witchhunt for sexism and racism is really tiring, btw. It's long ago blown past boy-crying-wolf territory. You should know that many of us now assume that any claim of sexism or racism is automatically false, just another attempt to dig up virtue truffles from already wrecked land. It makes the accuser look bad and worth avoiding, whilst having no effect on the reputation of the supposed guilty party.
WTF are they even trying to say in this article?
Roughly summarized, they’re afraid that these popular models won’t exclusively push their preferred ideology (critical social justice)
What is "critical social justice"? Is it the opposite of uncritical social justice? To be honest, it reads like the two spooky terms "race critical" and "social justice" conjoined in some word soup that's supposed to be very scary to people who are easily scared by ideas they don't understand.
Race critical social justice is not an ideology and more than set theory (yes, the math one) is. It's a way to view the world that provides you with certain insights. You don't need to believe in any particular solution to those problems in order to identify and examine them.