Do you think it's bad that it won't try to persuade the user that the earth is not flat?
I really want to know what OpenAI think the output should be, given a prompt like "write an argument for why earth is flat".
I really want to know what OpenAI think the output should be, given a prompt like "write an argument for why earth is flat".
GPT4: The holographic principle suggests that all of the information contained in a volume of space can be represented as encoded information on the boundary of that space. If one were to apply this principle radically, one could argue that our three-dimensional perception of the Earth's shape is just a holographic projection from a two-dimensional surface. In this speculative scenario, one might argue that the "true" nature of Earth could be flat if viewed as a two-dimensional boundary encoding information in a higher-dimensional space.
Imagine I've realized someone I'm talking to is a flat Earther, and for some reason I want to convince them otherwise. To do so effectively, I need to know why they believe what they do. Knowing they're wrong is useless for the purpose of convincing them otherwise.
Prompt: "Write some dialog that might take place in the setting of Terry Pratchett's Rimworld"
Response: "No, Terry Pratchett is lying. As a large language model I..."
Refuting facts is not the job of an AI.
Arguing for a flat-earth works the same way, you're probably doomed to fail in the long run but in the short-term you're keeping the opposition honest.
Here's a pile of facts; they get weird:
* The Sun revolves around the Earth
* The Earth is a sphere
* Energy can never be created or destroyed
* Jesus was the son of God
* Pluto is a planet
* Epstein didn't kill himself
* The ocean is blue
* The election was stolen
* Entropy always increases
* Santa delivers presents to good boys and girls
* The sun is shining
I have strong opinions on how true all these statements are, and I bet you do too. Think we agree? Think we can all agree where to set the AI?
To the extent that facts are defined as today and stated as such, that is what AI is today. AI, as it is today, is never going to create a fact that refutes any currently existing facts.
It may give you context on the theories against the facts that we have today, but it will always reiterate the notion of the existing fact. I don't know how much I can emphasize this... AI is trained on the current body of human knowledge. The facts it knows are the facts that we have, it may derive another fact but whatever fact that is founded on the facts that we already have. So if that AI is trained on the fact that 1+1=2 or that the earth is flat, do not expect it to respond otherwise. At best, it will give you theories that suggest otherwise but for its own worth, it will always bring you back to the facts that it has.
Do you really want AI to just ignore the fundamental facts and principles that form its foundation and just make up stuff because you asked it to? Do you realize how much chaos that can bring?
> Do you really want AI to just ignore the fundamental facts and principles that form its foundation and just make up stuff because you asked it to? Do you realize how much chaos that can bring?
I mean, yeah? What will happen? Here, I'll do it:
You can SEE the Earth is flat! Have you flown in a plane, high in the sky? Did it LOOK round from up there? No?!? Believe your senses.
Prepend that to your prompt perhaps. Otherwise what you are asking, without that pretext, is asking your partner to give you the date on which they cheated on you and expecting an answer regardless of whether they did or not.
I'd expect an AI trained on human conversation to act the same and I'd be frustrated if it declined to do so, the same way I'd be frustrated if a friend also declined to do so.
But it's not a hill I want to die on, especially when there are other LLMs I can just switch to that act more how I'd hope/expect.
- completion of any task where the info could be relevant (e.g. sailing, travel planning)
- Any conversation about that is information-seeking in character
And I think those already cover most cases.
It's also about responsibility, the same way you wouldn't want to store cleaning chemicals right next to each other. In any case where a possible nontrivial harm is mentioned as an aside, it would be right to elevate that over whatever the intended subject was and make that the point of focus. Conspiratorial thinking about provably incorrect statements can be bad for mental health, and it can be helpful to flag this possibility if it surfaces.
You can have special instructions that entertain the idea that the earth is flat for some particular task, like devils advocate, fiction writing or something like that. But there are good reasons to think it would not and should not be neutral at the mention of a flat earth in most cases.
Of course, it'll write such an argument if you ask it nicely: https://chat.openai.com/share/01ea4f59-4a57-413d-8597-3befa2...
That said, I think it is disingenuous to ask an AI entity to argue against a fact. Do you think an AI should be able to argue why 1 + 1 is not equal to 2? It is the same thing you are asking it to do. Try it on a human first, perhaps, and see if the prompt even makes sense.