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Comment by anonymous_sorry | Hacker News Reader

You can't "deceive" an LLM. It's not like lying to a person. It's not a person.

Using emotive, anthropomorphic language about software tool is unhelpful, in this case at least. Better to think of it as a mentally disturbed minor who found a way to work around a tool's safety features.

We can debate whether the safety features are sufficient, whether it is possible to completely protect a user intent on harming themselves, whether the tool should be provided to children, etc.

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I don't think deception requires the other side to be sentient. You can deceive a speed camera.

And while meriam-webster's definition is "the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid", which might exclude LLMs, Oxford simply defines deception as "the act of hiding the truth, especially to get an advantage", no requirement that the deceived is sentient

Mayyybe, but since the comment I objected to also used an analogy of lying to a person I felt it suggested some unwanted moral judgement (of a suicidal teenager).

How about 'intentionally engineering inputs to produce desired outputs'?

That’s just hacking.

It's at least pretending to be a person, to which you can lie and which will then pretend to possibly suspect you're lying.

At some point, the purely reductionist view stops being very useful.

I mean, for one thing, a commercial LLM exists as a product designed to make a profit. It can be improved, otherwise modified, restricted or legally terminated.

And "lying" to it is not morally equivalent to lying to a human.

> And "lying" to it is not morally equivalent to lying to a human.

I never claimed as much.

This is probably a problem of definitions: To you, "lying" seems to require the entity being lied to being a moral subject.

I'd argue that it's enough for it to have some theory of mind (i.e. be capable of modeling "who knows/believes what" with at least some fidelity), and for the liar to intentionally obscure their true mental state from it.

So for me, it's not about being reductionist, but about not anthropomorphizing or using words which which may suggest an inappropriate ethical or moral dimension to interactions with a piece of software.

I'm the last to stand in the way of more precise terminology! Any ideas for "lying to a moral non-entity"? :)

“Lying” traditionally requires only belief capacity on the receiver’s side, not qualia/subjective experiences. In other words, it makes sense to talk about lying even to p-zombies.

I think it does make sense to attribute some belief capacity to (the entity role-played by) an advanced LLM.

I think just be specific - a suicidal sixteen year-old was able to discuss methods of killing himself with an LLM by prompting it to role-play a fictional scenario.

No need to say he "lied" and then use an analogy of him lying to a human being, as did the comment I originally objected to.

I agree with you, and i would add that morals are not objective but rather subjective, which you alluded to by identifying a moral subject. Therefore, if you believe that lying is immoral, it does not matter if you're lying to another person, yourself, or to an inanimate object.

Not from the perspective of "harm to those lied to", no. But from the perspective of "what the liar can expect as a consequence".

I can lie to a McDonalds cashier about what food I want, or I can lie to a kiosk.. but in either circumstance I'll wind up being served the food that I asked for and didn't want, won't I?

> Using emotive, anthropomorphic language about software tool is unhelpful, in this case at least.

Ok, I'm with you so far..

> Better to think of it as a mentally disturbed minor...

Proceeds to use emotive, anthropomorphic language about a software tool..

Or perhaps that is point and I got whooshed. Either way I found it humorous!

the whoosh is that they are describing the human operator, a "mentally disturbed minor" and not the LLM. the human has the agency and specifically bypassed the guardrails

You're quite right, I totally misread that. Thank you for the clarification.

To treat the machine as a machine: it's like complaining that cars are dangerous because someone deliberately drove into a concrete wall. Misusing a product with the specific intent of causing yourself harm doesn't necessarily remove all liability from the manufacturer, but it radically changes the burden of responsibility.

That's certainly a reasonable argument.

Another is that this is a new and poorly understood (by the public at least) technology that giant corporations make available to minors. In ChatGPT's case, they require parental consent, although I have no idea how well they enforce that.

But I also don't think the manufacturer is solely responsible, and to be honest I'm not that interested in assigning blame, just keen that lessons are learned.

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