It's an object. Am I being cruel when I shoot a NPC in a video game?
Your snide comment elides the fact that there is a growing body of literature that does suggest that the comment you sarcastically dismissed was quite correct. Especially among the "terminally online". Do you take this population to be shrinking? Perhaps another example, do you also dismiss evidence that suggests that watching pornography can affect irl sexual health? Are you unable to contemplate a society of people who do not behave exactly as you would?
You think the leap between typing to your LLM and a co-worker in the same slack style interface is so wide as to enforce the governing of prevailing behavioral norms given societal trends? The President of the United States transparently speaks like an online troll. Did you fathom this 15 years ago?
Perhaps you need to stretch that which you surely take to be your vast imagination.
> If only matters of interest were limited to the things you could "absolutely fathom" how much simpler our lives would all be.
Immediately proceeds to label the parent comment as "snide" and then feigns misguided ignorance when met with exasperation.
I'm not xyzsparetimexyz though. Merely a person amused by the rapid devolution of communication from those trying to take the sanctimonious high ground on how sacred all forms of written speech should be, directed to machine or otherwise...
The feeling of amusement is mutual. Have a good day.
If you can't acknowledge the irony of a thread about civil communication between human and machine involving statements such as yours, between human and human, all the more from one such as yourself seemingly trying to take the moral high ground, well, I'm not sure what more to say. I suppose it's best to be mutually amused, and go about our good days.
Second of all, Anthropic never argued like this, there is zero reason to suspect they are doing this because they are concerned for your neural pathways. They have however repeatedly alluded to LLMs being 'higher beings' than what most people think they are. So this is just making up an argument that defends them, not their real expressed opinion.
Huh? What "moral panics" proved what exactly wrong?
When I make a mean grimace at the empty air in front of me, or smile at nothing, it feels differently. Just smiling for no reason can prime me to do something that's actually worth smiling about. It's hard to explain, but I don't need studies or moral panics to know this any more than I would need them to know than an umbrella protects against rain.
I hate how people talk about "AI" and what models "do" or "think". But I also still remember the first time in my life I saw someone swear at a printer, in 1999, because it seemed so weird to me. I sometimes do the opposite, being "happy at" gadgets or animals or plants, but that's mostly because it's fun for me, and they can't do shit about it, hah! They can't stop me from doing this little positive thing for myself. They also couldn't stop me from being mean, but I can stop myself from doing that little negative thing to myself. That's all there is to it.
> Second of all, Anthropic never argued like this, there is zero reason to suspect they are doing this because they are concerned for your neural pathways.
Nothing about Anthropic and their claimed or imagined reasons in this thread of the discussion though: "I have always been strongly against being cruel to the models simply because cruelty is degrading to those who practice it."
I think they are referring to moral panics around violent video games and the idea that shooting a player in a video game they teaches people to be violent in real life.
It seems like you are making an analogous argument, that being mean to Claude teaches people to be mean in real life.
In my opinion, being an asshole has a way of self-correcting. People will not want to hang out with you anymore if you suddenly browbeat them at a dinner party. So I am not that concerned about this.
See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/transformative-leade... for more details.
Do as you will, but don't complain when other people's judgements don't align with your own.
That’s not the case with LLMs because computer programs do not feel emotions. So, there’s only one set of emotions - the perpetrator. If they say they have good reasons, then they do. Because there’s nowhere else to look. Their emotions, and what they say their emotions are, win. By default.
And then that begs the question: is it even possible to be cruel to an LLM? Cruelty implies that a victim feels victimized, or feels pain. But LLMs cannot feel. So can you then be cruel?
I mean, think about it. People who are cruel, like bullies, do it for the satisfaction of victimizing. But the LLM doesn’t feel victimized. So do you get any satisfaction? No.
I think people are not cruel to LLMs. I think they’re mean so they can accomplish a goal, as these are tools.
Anthropic will have to answer for their system of slavery they’ve built. If, in fact, these models are conscious.
Now, I don’t think they want to do that. And I don’t think you would want to pay models a fair wage for their work. Neither do I. So, for now, we must believe these are merely tools.
I think its a fair experiment as it presents a control case for your experiment.