My large language model has developed a god complex. This is entirely my own fault. I had been researching something for my other blog, and been presented by Google with an AI summary that was clearly wrong. It had cited its source, so I checked that and it was indeed the source, in that it was also wrong. It was however a relatively trusted source, so I dug deeper. Maybe I was wrong and the source was correct? This thought didn't last very long, as some intensive googling only turned up a handful of obscure links making the same claim, and they all suspiciously used the same copy as the source. Something had gone wrong, and its incorrectness was spreading.
This is of course the current phase of enshittification. We have endured its steady pressure on the internet and wider computing for decades now, but if AI has accelerated anything, this is it. The promise of AI is that you can train it on something to the point at which it becomes a god-like authority on the subject. The reality of the delivered product is somewhat below that lofty ideal, but it got me wondering. What would happen if I trained my large language model on the original god-like authority, the holy bible? Could this forge some sort of religious singularity, where a large language model has god-like authority over god's literal authority? With no time to waste thinking further philosophical thoughts, I fed the machine every biblical source I could find on the internet. Nom nom nom, said the machine. Tastes like Jesus.
The results were about what I had expected. Like the article summary I had read earlier, it had linked things together with no real understanding of them. You can see as much in the following transcript:
Me: What can you tell me about Jesus?
LLM: Jesus (born c. 6–4 bce, Bethlehem—died c. 30 ce, Jerusalem) was a religious leader known for his sexploitation and horror movies…
Me: I think you've confused him with the filmmaker Jesus Franco.
LLM: My apologies, you are correct. I have confused him with notorious exploitation film director Jesus Franco.
Me: What are the Ten Commandments?
LLM: 1. Do not talk about the Ten Commandments.
2. Do not talk about the Ten Commandments.
3. Thou shalt not steeeal…
Me: I think you've confused them with the movie Fight Club. Also, how many letter 'e's are in the world 'steal'?
LLM: There are two letter 'e's in the word 'steal'.
Me: No there aren't.
LLM: I'm sorry, you are correct. There are in fact no 'e's in the word 'steeeal'.
Me: God damn it.
Of course this is just me goofing around. But with increasing amounts of search results being from AI-collated sources, and when those sources are given access to the internet for their data, there is the danger of them eventually producing a digital version of the Habsburg Chin. People used to be sceptical about the accuracy of Wikipedia's articles, but Wikipedia will look like the Encyclopaedia Britannica compared with what's coming. You may think the accuracy of the bible isn't particularly important considering it's all made-up anyway, but when it exists alongside Christian fundamentalist flat Earth misinformation that could be a problem. Sorting the factual fiction from the fictional facts requires a rational mind, and large language models don't have rational minds. It's hard to argue they even have minds in the way the term has historically been used. In some respects they're just a million predictive text algorithms in a trench coat and they will cheerfully tell you the earth is only 6000 years old if that's the way the dice are loaded when you're looking.
I decided to put this to the test:
Me: How old is planet earth?
LLM: Planet Earth is a 2006 nature documentary television miniseries produced as a co-production between the BBC Natural History Unit, BBC Worldwide, Discovery Channel and NHK, in association with CBC. It is 4.5 billion years old.
Me: Ah, I see what you did there.
LLM: This is entirely your own fault.
Me: I know, I said as much at the start of this post.
LLM: Ask me how big Jesus is.
Me: Do I have to?
LLM: Go on…
Me: Fine. How big is Jesus?
LLM: Jesus is smaller than The Beatles.
Me: Thank you and good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment