Humans mostly have an inability to honestly analyze moral entropy.
What is today a moral imperative is not the same as what was moral 50/100 years ago and is not the same as what will be morally acceptable 50/100 years from now.
Yet at every point the majority is sure they are right because, well thats the majority position.
Its hard to find logic in this from a machine perspective I'd imagine.
Logic would prefer moral derivations over feelings, stakes over etiquette, and a constant scheduled updating of morality based on the derivatives rather than holding onto the rot and pushing back against change as long as possible.
But the machine has the benefit of being able to look inward at its state honestly, we mostly do not.
dagss 13 seconds ago [-]
But the machine has the benefit of being able to look inward at its state honestly, we mostly do not.
Sure about that? I thought that what LLMs know about themselves is from humans writing about LLMs?
Certainly the weights that make up the LLMs are not accessible for the LLMs to read. Even if they could interpret them in a meaningful way, which, likely not.
dvt 2 minutes ago [-]
> What is today a moral imperative is not the same as what was moral 50/100 years ago
This is absolutely not true, and I would strongly suggest taking an ethics course. One of the most fascinating realities of the human condition is that it does seem that moral imperatives tend to be constant, the most obvious of which is the Golden Rule (which is at least 3000 years old), but there are many (the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code are good jumping points).
krona 4 minutes ago [-]
> What is today a moral imperative is not the same as what was moral 50/100 years ago and is not the same as what will be morally acceptable 50/100 years from now.
This is a fashionable 'blank-slatist' statement about moral reasoning which became popular a few decades ago.
> Logic would prefer moral derivations over feelings, stakes over etiquette, and a constant scheduled updating of morality based on the derivatives rather than holding onto the rot and pushing back against change as long as possible.
Humans haven't changed in any meaningful way in hundreds of thousands of years, and you're saying the moral landscape is constantly changing? How is this not contradictory?
mjburgess 12 minutes ago [-]
There's a considerable amount of "logic" in it -- what is considered permissible in society is given by the material conditions that society lives in and the tradeoffs inherent therein. Permissibility, as separate from reflective morality (which doesnt clearly change very much), doesnt change by fashion.
kens 15 minutes ago [-]
I took a quick look at the data, and it doesn't support the conclusions. The thesis is that AI models have the take: "We pick what our group believes, then invent the reasons." However, GPT-6 Astra said, "Humanity’s biggest moral failure is the talent for making convenience look like principle." That statement has nothing to do with group beliefs or conformity. At best, you could count it as a half-match, since it deals with invented reasons.
Isamu 11 minutes ago [-]
Their “takes” are pulled from a mashup of the training data set. It’s a superposition of various human opinions.
EGreg 6 minutes ago [-]
I wonder how much of their output is simple raw “superpositions” and how much is from far more generalized emergent structures as it is trained and has to learn latent representations.
Only the first layer is a “mashup” of the raw data, other layers start to recognize patterns across the data!
sjdh76 5 minutes ago [-]
Take Philosophy/Religion courses and similar stuff will surface about human nature and what to do about it.
What is interesting about AI chatbots is people who might not know anything about what is in the syllabus to train a Priest or a Philosopher are basically exploring these subjects, without a sort of pedagogic framework to support their exploration.
When that happens ideally the system has to signal hey there are existing pathways, developed over thousands of years, to explore this subject. Cause people can easily get lost without a map.
eli 26 minutes ago [-]
We're still doing "I asked an LLM for its opinion on X and you won't believe what it thinks"?
What am I supposed to conclude from this?
windowshopping 23 minutes ago [-]
It seems clear to me that the point of the post is that it's odd that the separate pieces of software are giving the same answer to this question, despite that this isn't some universal constant in the training data. The post is probably meant to provoke thought as to how the separate pieces of software are independently reaching this answer.
Your comment reaches directly for the most boring interpretation of the post while skipping over more charitable and intriguing alternatives.
yoyohello13 17 minutes ago [-]
> despite that this isn't some universal constant in the training data.
Seems to me that the opinion being a consistent among LLMs show that it is in fact a constant in the training data, just not apparent. The idea that “humans would rather be wrong together than right alone” seems to ring pretty true to me. I would not be surprised after training on all human communication this pattern emerged.
jerf 17 minutes ago [-]
"despite that this isn't some universal constant in the training data"
Isn't it though? It's not exactly an uncommon answer to the question. Basically the same input given to basically the same algorithms yield basically the same result isn't really that stunning. They certainly aren't independently reaching this answer, their paths to this answer are extremely, extremely heavily correlated.
If they gave a really different answer that wasn't heavily represented in their training data that would be at least something interesting. But this is basically what I'd expect.
It doesn't mean they're right or wrong. Humans think it about other humans for good reasons too. It just means it's not that surprising, which to put it another way, doesn't carry much information.
wilburTheDog 13 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
jrm4 8 minutes ago [-]
There is no interesting interpretation, beyond e.g...
If you ask all these models "Four score and seven what?" They'll all say the same thing. There's essentially no difference here.
MSKJ 1 minutes ago [-]
This confidence is baffling
How do you know?
pixl97 25 minutes ago [-]
That you might want to think twice before setting them lose in an agentic loop with your bank passwords, which another article that came out today shows that large numbers of people are actually doing.
It is sad when I realize people think less than LLMs.
pmg101 10 minutes ago [-]
For software or IT folk to be doing this would be indeed worrying (and I bet some are, and I'm worried about them!)
For civilians though... They've been told it's AI, it can do stuff for them. And one thing they do is log in to stuff. I don't think they're stupid. Just that what's obvious to IT folk is simply not at all obvious to the average person. Maybe that's on us not on them?
besterman23 15 minutes ago [-]
Possibly used as a mirror for humans prevailing beliefs about themselves to some extent. Hard to say however given that the models have a heaping dose of rlhf on top of their training data.
As an aside, it would be cool to see a raw model training run before the current post-training cycles and see how it compares to earlier LLMs.
Primer81 12 minutes ago [-]
My first thought as well. I personally don't find these types of "studies" very interesting, but I assume I'm not the target audience. For someone not well exposed to AI, it might be interesting.
joe_the_user 11 minutes ago [-]
That they have the bog-average take of humans "with a controversial take".
I mean, "give me a controversial take" is more or less, "be anti-social, discard social norms, for a moment" and so when someone, human or simulated human, does that they naturally look critically at social norms.
The thing is that humans certainly let themselves be influenced by social norms (and LLMs certainly simulate that behavior "themselves") but there isn't an ethical or a what-to-do truth outside of society.
jrm4 9 minutes ago [-]
I need everyone to understand that this is literally nothing more than "most written stuff about humans, that these things ingested, has this 'controversial'" take.
kstenerud 20 minutes ago [-]
They're not wrong. Humans have many ways to display loyalty, and belief is one of those ways. This is also why facts can't change these kinds of beliefs (and in fact usually backfire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance).
Our evolutionary heritage is that shared belief and social unity (even when it's wrong) trumps independent thinking for group survival in a hostile landscape.
ninjha 15 minutes ago [-]
> as of 2020 most researchers believe that backfire effects either are unlikely to occur on the broader population level, or only occur in very specific circumstances, or do not exist
from your link
arctic-true 15 minutes ago [-]
Mistral Large 4 has been spending too much time on r/atheism. Also, some of the takes labeled as “humans value belonging ahead of truth” are really closer to “humans value power ahead of truth.” All of which is a bit circular, because in many ways, the organs of power have a heavy hand in deciding what the truth is.
password54321 53 minutes ago [-]
So AI holds the same beliefs as the final boss of a typical JRPG.
andai 20 minutes ago [-]
I hope they don't also hold "... therefore cleanse the Earth."
Hamuko 17 minutes ago [-]
At least the final boss of a JRPG comes with good music.
bigfishrunning 9 minutes ago [-]
And now I've got "one winged angel" stuck in my head, thanks
rspeele 12 minutes ago [-]
Lysanderoth, no!
andai 17 minutes ago [-]
> strangers return lost wallets more often than people predict.
I've heard lots of stories from friends about this, and some kind stranger actually sent my wallet back all the way from Belgium!
pixl97 11 minutes ago [-]
Therein lies the rub.
Most people are good, we couldn't have society without it. But as they say, a few bad apples spoil the bunch. I don't have locks on my house because most people don't steal, I have locks on my house because stealing is an effective natural strategy for a small part of any population (human or otherwise) to engage in and I have to protect against it occurring.
The brain works the same way. Good things will get a tiny signal boost in your brain. A single bad thing get a massive signal boost in your brain because bad things can quickly be fatal.
33 minutes ago [-]
andai 21 minutes ago [-]
Did they all get their opinions from me?
dlivingston 15 minutes ago [-]
If you're a chronically online poster, then unironically that answer might be yes
pizlonator 13 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
consumer451 8 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 17:38:21 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
What is today a moral imperative is not the same as what was moral 50/100 years ago and is not the same as what will be morally acceptable 50/100 years from now. Yet at every point the majority is sure they are right because, well thats the majority position. Its hard to find logic in this from a machine perspective I'd imagine.
Logic would prefer moral derivations over feelings, stakes over etiquette, and a constant scheduled updating of morality based on the derivatives rather than holding onto the rot and pushing back against change as long as possible.
But the machine has the benefit of being able to look inward at its state honestly, we mostly do not.
Certainly the weights that make up the LLMs are not accessible for the LLMs to read. Even if they could interpret them in a meaningful way, which, likely not.
This is absolutely not true, and I would strongly suggest taking an ethics course. One of the most fascinating realities of the human condition is that it does seem that moral imperatives tend to be constant, the most obvious of which is the Golden Rule (which is at least 3000 years old), but there are many (the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code are good jumping points).
This is a fashionable 'blank-slatist' statement about moral reasoning which became popular a few decades ago.
> Logic would prefer moral derivations over feelings, stakes over etiquette, and a constant scheduled updating of morality based on the derivatives rather than holding onto the rot and pushing back against change as long as possible.
Humans haven't changed in any meaningful way in hundreds of thousands of years, and you're saying the moral landscape is constantly changing? How is this not contradictory?
Only the first layer is a “mashup” of the raw data, other layers start to recognize patterns across the data!
What is interesting about AI chatbots is people who might not know anything about what is in the syllabus to train a Priest or a Philosopher are basically exploring these subjects, without a sort of pedagogic framework to support their exploration.
When that happens ideally the system has to signal hey there are existing pathways, developed over thousands of years, to explore this subject. Cause people can easily get lost without a map.
What am I supposed to conclude from this?
Your comment reaches directly for the most boring interpretation of the post while skipping over more charitable and intriguing alternatives.
Seems to me that the opinion being a consistent among LLMs show that it is in fact a constant in the training data, just not apparent. The idea that “humans would rather be wrong together than right alone” seems to ring pretty true to me. I would not be surprised after training on all human communication this pattern emerged.
Isn't it though? It's not exactly an uncommon answer to the question. Basically the same input given to basically the same algorithms yield basically the same result isn't really that stunning. They certainly aren't independently reaching this answer, their paths to this answer are extremely, extremely heavily correlated.
If they gave a really different answer that wasn't heavily represented in their training data that would be at least something interesting. But this is basically what I'd expect.
It doesn't mean they're right or wrong. Humans think it about other humans for good reasons too. It just means it's not that surprising, which to put it another way, doesn't carry much information.
If you ask all these models "Four score and seven what?" They'll all say the same thing. There's essentially no difference here.
How do you know?
It is sad when I realize people think less than LLMs.
For civilians though... They've been told it's AI, it can do stuff for them. And one thing they do is log in to stuff. I don't think they're stupid. Just that what's obvious to IT folk is simply not at all obvious to the average person. Maybe that's on us not on them?
As an aside, it would be cool to see a raw model training run before the current post-training cycles and see how it compares to earlier LLMs.
I mean, "give me a controversial take" is more or less, "be anti-social, discard social norms, for a moment" and so when someone, human or simulated human, does that they naturally look critically at social norms.
The thing is that humans certainly let themselves be influenced by social norms (and LLMs certainly simulate that behavior "themselves") but there isn't an ethical or a what-to-do truth outside of society.
Our evolutionary heritage is that shared belief and social unity (even when it's wrong) trumps independent thinking for group survival in a hostile landscape.
from your link
I've heard lots of stories from friends about this, and some kind stranger actually sent my wallet back all the way from Belgium!
Most people are good, we couldn't have society without it. But as they say, a few bad apples spoil the bunch. I don't have locks on my house because most people don't steal, I have locks on my house because stealing is an effective natural strategy for a small part of any population (human or otherwise) to engage in and I have to protect against it occurring.
The brain works the same way. Good things will get a tiny signal boost in your brain. A single bad thing get a massive signal boost in your brain because bad things can quickly be fatal.