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Death by AI

(davebarry.substack.com)
583 points ano-ther | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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devinplatt ◴[] No.44619933[source]
This reminds me a lot of the special policies Wikipedia has developed through experience about sensitive topics, like biographies of living persons, deaths, etc.
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pyman ◴[] No.44619994[source]
I'm worried about this. Companies like Wikipedia spent years trying to get things right, and now suddenly Google and Microsoft (including OpenAI) are using GenAI to generate content that, frankly, can't be trusted because it's often made up.

That's deeply concerning, especially when these two companies control almost all the content we access through their search engines, browsers and LLMs.

This needs to be regulated. These companies should be held accountable for spreading false information or rumours, as it can have unexpected consequences.

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Aurornis ◴[] No.44620081[source]
> This needs to be regulated. They should be held accountable for spreading false information or rumours,

Regulated how? Held accountable how? If we start fining LLM operators for pieces of incorrect information you might as well stop serving the LLM to that country.

> since it can have unexpected consequences

Generally you hold the person who takes action accountable. Claiming an LLM told you bad information isn’t any more of a defense than claiming you saw the bad information on a Tweet or Reddit comment. The person taking action and causing the consequences has ownership of their actions.

I recall the same hand-wringing over early search engines: There was a debate about search engines indexing bad information and calls for holding them accountable for indexing incorrect results. Same reasoning: There could be consequences. The outrage died out as people realize they were tools to be used with caution, not fact-checked and carefully curated encyclopedias.

> I'm worried about this. Companies like Wikipedia spent years trying to get things right,

Would you also endorse the same regulations against Wikipedia? Wikipedia gets fined every time incorrect information is found on the website?

EDIT: Parent comment was edited while I was replying to add the comment about outside of the US. I welcome some country to try regulating LLMs to hold them accountable for inaccurate results so we have some precedent for how bad of an idea that would be and how much the citizens would switch to using VPNs to access the LLM providers that are turned off for their country in response.

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1. blibble ◴[] No.44620631[source]
> If we start fining LLM operators for pieces of incorrect information you might as well stop serving the LLM to that country.

sounds good to me?

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2. pyman ◴[] No.44620664[source]
+1

Fines, when backed by strong regulation, can lead to more control and better quality information, but only if companies are actually held to account.