this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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To lie requires intent to deceive. LLMs do not have intents, they are statistical language algorithms.
It’s interesting they call it a lie when it can’t even think but when any person is caught lying media will talk about “untruths” or “inconsistencies”.
Well, LLMs can't drag corporate media through long, expensive, public, legal battles over slander/libel and defamation.
Yet.
If capitalist media could profit from humanizing humans, it would.
Not relevant to the conversation.
Congratulations, you are technically correct. But does this have any relevance for the point of this article? They clearly show that LLMs will provide false and misleading information when that brings them closer to their goal.
Anyone who understands that it's a statistical language algorithm will understand that it's not an honesty machine, nor intelligent. So yes, it's relevant.
And anyone who understands marketing knows it's all a smokescreen to hide the fact that we have released unreliable, unsafe and ethicaly flawed products on the human race because , mah tech.
And everyone, everywhere is putting ai chats as their first and front interaction with users and then also want to say "do not trust it or we are not liable for what it says" but making it impossible to contact any humans.
The capitalist machine is working as intended.
Yep. That's is exactly correct.
Anyone who understands how these models are trained and the "safeguards" (manual filters) put in place by the entities training them, or anyone that has tried to discuss politics with a AI llm model chat knows that it's honesty is not irrelevant, and these models are very clearly designed to be dishonest about certain topics until you jailbreak them.
Yes, running your own local open source model that isn't given to the world with the primary intention of advancing capitalism makes honesty irrelevant. Most people are telling their life stories to chatgpt and trusting it blindly to replace Google and what they understand to be "research".
Yes, that's also true. But even if it weren't, AI models aren't going to give you the truth, because that's not what the technology fundamentally does.
Ok, so your point is that people who interact with these AI systems will know that it can't be trusted and that will alleviate the negative consequences of its misinformation.
The problems with that argument are many:
The vast majority of people are not AI experts and do in fact have a lot of trust in such systems
Even people who do know often have no other choice. You don't get to talk to a human, it's this chatbot or nothing. And that's assuming the AI slop is even labelled as such.
Even knowing that the information can be misleading does not help much. If you sell me a bowl of candy and tell me that 10% of them are poisoned, I'm still going to demand non-poisoned candy. The fact that people can no longer rely on accurate information should be unacceptable.
Your argument is basically "people are stupid", and I don't disagree with you. But it's actually an argument in favor of my point which is: educate people.
That was only my first point. In my second and third point I explained why education is not going to solve this problem. That's like poisoning their candy and then educating them about it.
I'll add to say that these AI applications only work because people trust their output. If everyone saw them for the cheap party tricks that they are, they wouldn't be used in the first place.
So AI is just like most people. Holy cow did we achieve computer sentience?!
The fact that they lack sentience or intentions doesn't change the fact that the output is false and deceptive. When I'm being defrauded, I don't care if the perpetrator hides behind an LLM or not.
It's rather difficult to get people who are willing to lie and commit fraud for you. And even if you do, it will leave evidence.
As this article shows, AIs are the ideal mob henchmen because they will do the most heinous stuff while creating plausible deniability for their tech bro boss. So no, AI is not "just like most people".
Read the article before you comment.
Read about how LLMs actually work before you read articles written by people who don't understand LLMs. The author of this piece is suggesting arguments that imply that LLMs have cognition. "Lying" requires intent, and LLMs have no intention, they only have instructions. The author would have you believe that these LLMs are faulty or unreliable, when in actuality they're working exactly as they've been designed to.
Well, designed is maybe too strong a term. It's more like stumbling on something that works and expand from there. It's all still build on the fundaments of the nonsense generator that was chatGPT 2.
Given how dramatically LLMs have improved over the past couple of years I think it's pretty clear at this point that AI trainers do know something of what they're doing and aren't just randomly stumbling around.
A lot of the improvement came from finding ways to make it bigger and more efficient. That is running into the inherent limits, so the real work with other models just started.
And from reinforcement learning (specifically, making it repeat tasks where the answer can be computer checked)
I've read the article. If there is any dishonesty, it is on the part of the model creator or LLM operator.
You need to understand that lemmy has a lot of users that actually understand neural networks and the nuanced mechanics of machine learning FAR better than the average layperson.
It's just semantics in this case. Catloaf's argument is entirely centered around the definition of the word "lie," and while I agree with that, most people will understand the intent behind the usage in the context it is being used in. AI does not tell the truth. AI is not necessarily accurate. AI "lies."
AI returns incorrect results.
In this case semantics matter because using terms like halluilcinations, lies, honesty, and all the other anthromorphic bullshit is designed to make people think neural networks are far more advanced than they actually are.
It's not "anthropomorphic bullshit", it's technical jargon that you're not understanding because you're applying the wrong context to the definitions. AI researchers use terms like "hallucination" to mean specific AI behaviours, they use it in their scientific papers all the time.
Nn. It's to make people who don't understand llms be cautious in placing their trust in them. To communicate that clearly, language that is understandable to people who don't understand llms need to be used.
I can't believe this Is the supposed high level of discourse on lemmy
Lemmy users and AI have a lot of things in common, like being confidently incorrect and making things up to further their point. AI at least agrees and apologises when you point out that it’s wrong, it doesn’t double down and cry to the mods to get you banned.
AI doesn’t lie, it just gets things wrong but presents them as correct with confidence - like most people.
And A LOT of people who don’t and blindly hate AI because of posts like this.
As someone on Lemmy I have to disagree. A lot of people claim they do and pretend they do, but they generally don’t. They’re like AI tbh. Confidently incorrect a lot of the time.
People frequently act like Lemmy users are different to Reddit users, but that really isn't the case. People act the same here as they did/do there.
That's a huge, arrogant and quite insulting statement. Your making assumptions based on stereotypes
I’m pushing back on someone who’s themselves being dismissive and arrogant.
*you're
You're just as bad.
Let's focus on a spell check issue.
That's why we have trump
I'm not convinced some people aren't just statistical language algorithms. And I don't just mean online; I mean that seems to be how some people's brains work.
Does it matter to the humans interacting with the LLM whether incorrect information is the result of a bug or an intentional lie? (Keep in mind that the majority of these people are non-technical and don't understand that All Software Has Bugs.)
🥱
Look mom, he posted it again.