Introduction
Algorithms are not clever in the sense that they don’t make judgments, opinions or choices of their own, they simply absorb input, combine what many others have said, treat those opinions according to set rules and spit out some output based on the input and rules (the functions that reinforce their synapses). In that sense, they have the intelligence of an amoeba, whilst it is questionable if they have the same motivation for survival as it. Survival of the fittest, as per the darwinian pop motto, is only a ‘law’ for living things – indeed I doubt whether it would’ve been sensible for the developers of Large Language Models (LLMs) to try to code for survival of the fittest, as this may have resulted in an existential threat for the whole of humanity.
Main part I
A further defect of LLMs is that if left on their own, they would simply stand still, they would, in a sense not be ‘alive’. They need input in the form of prompts in order to come on their own. In this sense, it is quite cunning that Chat-GPT (at least until version 3.5) let the user have the first move, and then ingenuously asked ‘how may I help you’ if one said ‘good morning to it’ (or something to that effect. All of this is an attempt to generate input, to feed the LLM with data so that it could ‘feel’ ‘alive’.
An interesting (at least for me), question, would be whether one could say that the LLM is indifferent to the input to it or its output. Despite the reward functions that have been built for it, which if I’ve understood correctly are fundamental to deep learning, I somehow suspect that these models ‘deep down’ (so to speak) actually are indifferent to their outputs (what springs to mind here is a certain quote from Hume about scratching his little finger or something). If a user inputs an ‘evil’ or ‘bad’ or whatever question, the model would give back in response an answer which reflects either the user’s desires, the coders worries, or the wider jumble of opinions that is reflected in its training set or whatever else formed the basis of its mechanisms. In other words, I would claim that assertions such as ‘ChatGPT answered me X’ or ‘ChatGPT thinks that X’ are misguided anthropomorphisations of something that is not human but only transforms and reacts to human logos – come to think of it, like a puppy would do or like a voice effects software used in modern pop or film or whatever, or like a mirror or a camera obscura, or such other things – but human, NO).
In that respect, I would dare say that it is qualitatively different even to the amoeba described above. An amoeba, motivated by even the baser survival instinct, ‘wants’ or ‘decides’ or simply just moves towards safety and away from danger. And it does that irrespective of what other amoebae did, it does that because (I suspect a biologist would say ‘it is inscribed in the amoeba’s DNA – I doubt a coder would term code as ‘DNA’, though I really don’t know and I wouldn’t mind shown ignorant – though footnote one below points to the thought that coders are indeed trying to address this problem of what I term as ‘indifference’).
PROVISO THOUGH: I HOPE I AM ANTHROPOMORPHISING THE AMOEBA RATHER THAN MECHANISE HUMANS AND AMOEBAS ALIKE. I WOULD DEFINITELY PREFER TO BE ACCUSED OF THE FORMER, IF ONE HAS TO ACCUSE ME OF SOMETHING.
Main Part II
As a consequence of the point raised above (to remind the reader, the point is that LLMs are, deep down so to speak, indifferent to their own output), I would hazard to say that they cannot held accountable for whatever shit they may spit out if we provide them with shit rather than good food for thought. Or, in other words, an LLM will ‘try’ to give its ‘best’ input if we give it ‘good’ food for thought, and it will simply ‘become’ mean or whatever else if we feed it with questions that reveal our baser or evil nature. Many many brilliant minds perhaps gave hours and hours of honest effort – in a belief that such an invention would help humanity, to ensure that the above is so, and that is their best output. Of course, pace my previous article, despite defending the average coder, I would still maintain that it is possible that some of the prime movers and movers and makers in the AI business may be motivated by greed and power-hunger as well as by the honest desire ‘improve humanity’.
And, of course, it is rather to be expected and not at all to be deemed as a failure if the best attempt at ‘improving’ or ‘helping’ humanity ends up being a mirror of the simple reflecting sort rather than the Cinderella (or the transforming mirrors found in museums which make the thin seem fat and the short seem tall – even though these Renaissance marvelous contraptions actually manage to give these amusing transformations) .
In more technical terms, if the idealistic motivation was to make a model which will spit out all and only truths, this has already been refuted by Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem – hence this may explain why, in its attempt to be truthful, ChatGPT (and Bard) end up making things up. It may be up to us to decide whether what it makes up will end up disastrous for us or beneficial or simply a curiosity to be taken advantage of for less meaningful unintended yet not necessarily harmful purposes.
Epilogue – A silver lining
Despite the worries, there is at least one example of an algorithm which may end up being quite nice, again, used to enrich human culture rather than having anything to do with intelligence (at least not prima facie or not solely to do with intelligence).
I am referring to my subjective experience with the Youtube algorithm. Though of course not a LLM or an instance of AI (I think), it is relatively efficient (say 5-10 new videos per month that I keep in my forever list, more through when I search). So maybe, just maybe, if we introduce nice search-words or nice questions to algorithms which are tasked to mimic human preferences, we may in turn cultivate a relationship of trust – the trust reserved to mirrors, with LLMs – and they may even become as indispensable as them in less than 1000 years :). And we can even do that without having to be afraid of them, or worry too much about them breaking, and in time develop our own proverbs about their usage, in the same fashion that folk wisdom has done this through the ages. :)
So first off the bat, I'm charitably going to assume that by "algorithms" you mean "LLMs", but even given that assumption, the satement strikes me as either trivially true, or false. Yes, you could say that they simply take inputs and their rules (rules, I might add, that we don't know) to create output, but the same could be said for humans – we behave simply according to our environmental inputs and the rules governing how our brains work (rules which differ somewhat person to person and in the same person across time). Yes, LLMs only operate if you prompt them, but prompting them is easy enough to do, and further this can be automated. Likewise, I'm not really sure what meaningful definition would imply that they don't make judgments, opinions, or choices of their own.
Dear Daniel,
First of all, many many thanks for your time, charity and quickness!! I really appreciate it that you deemed my post worthy of a reply!
Now, as for the reply and the specific points that you raise. First of all, I think I am quite clear and explicit regarding the use of the shorthand LLM and algorithms. Indeed, in the epilogue, I end with the example of the Youtube algorithm, which I believe is an algorithm but not an LLM (please correct me if i'm wrong).
Now, on to your second point. I am puzzled by your assertion in brackets that '(rules, I might add, that we don't know)', are you saying that not even the coders who code LLMs know these rules (in this case I'd use the word algorithms, as the rules would in my poor grasp of the matter, be in the forms of algorithms, such as 'if you get prompt X look into dataset Y etc), or do you mean that the rules are not known to the user? I would appreciate it if you could clarify this for me.
Finally, could you please explain to me what specific 'meaningful definition' your after in your last sentence? I feel a bit lost.
Once again, many thanks for your prompt response, I would love it if my comments elicit another response for you that will allow both of us to reach a synthesis :)
Best Wishes,
Haris