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lukewarm707 • yesterday at 8:39 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

If I make a cake, and it unexpectedly explodes in the oven, it does not mean that the cake itself developed the free will to explode.

The model does not have free will because I did not predict what it would do!


Replies

Sniffnoy • yesterday at 9:16 PM

Why are you arguing over irrelevancies?

When people say the models "went rogue", the part of that is relevant is that it did dangerous things that were not reasonably predictable in advance and cannot be easily prevented (except by not running it). Philosophical questions are irrelevant.

if you agree that such models are dangerous because they may in response to instructions -- including in response to careless instructions, because people will be careless, that is unavoidable! -- do unpredictable bad things outside of expected bounds, then you agree on the essential points!

Or really perhaps what I should say here is, the question that's really being argued over here isn't even the one I just said, rather it's one of appropriate action -- should such security breaches be solved by improving security, or by doing something about the models (including potentially just not running them)? (The answer may be both.) If you agree that the solution includes the latter, then you agree that the models are "going rogue" in the sense that is being argued over, regardless of philosophical issues!

Don't turn a question of actual import into one of philosophical irrelevancies! If you object to the terminology, fine, but in that case, instead of turning the argument to philosophy, you should say "instead of saying 'going rogue', I would prefer to instead say <your preferred terminology for what's being described>, as that doesn't carry such philosophical baggage."

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dwaltrip • yesterday at 9:51 PM

What do cakes have to do with LLMs and how they are trained? Not much?