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"Torturing" LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet (www.404media.co)
submitted 3 days ago by [M, B] to c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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[–] 1 point 3 days ago (4 children)

We already know that habitually using an LLM will weaken your critical thinking.

It would not be surprising to learn that habitually abusing an LLM would weaken your empathy.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    There is no torturing though. If it was really conscious than sure I would agree with you but this is not the case. Would be more akiin to having my CPU run prime 95 for days on end. Harsh on the hardware, sure, but no moral / ethical issues in doing so.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    To be clear, I’m explicitly focusing on the moral subject here, not the object of their actions. When I say “abusing an LLM could injure the abuser’s humanity”, I’m making absolutely no claim about the LLM.

    As I said in the previous thread about this:

    LLMs aren’t conscious. They can’t feel pain.

    But you should treat them kindly. Because even in a consequentialist or deontological frame, your morals rely on developing good habits; but in virtue ethics, moral habits is really all there is.

    Edit: Very Bad Wizards actually covered this pretty well in this episode from 2018: https://verybadwizards.com/episode/episode-150-paul-bloom-insisted-that-we-talk-about-sex-robots

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago

    Sex robots are anthropomorphic in ways LLMs are not, despite how they are coded to respond to us. I agree that treating a sex robot poorly could cause moral injury since it so closely resembles a real human / repeated abuse could cause conflict somewhere in the soul / psyche.

    I view "torturing LLMs" in the same way I might view taking on a pest, or dealing with an aggressive invasive species. I'm not losing sleep over the germs / pathogens I kill everyday by washing my hands, the invasive planta I keep from my yard, the termites / cockroaches I prevent against.

    The problem is torture is a loaded word because you associate it with something cruel we do to another living thing. These arnt living and thus can't be torturred so remove whatever moral concern you are worried about.

    Poisoning the model is just and there is no such thing as model welfare.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    I'm not op but whether its torture is besides the point.

    If I'm spending six hours a day jerking off while talking to my LLM goonbot, then whether the model feels aroused by my narrative prose is not what my family and friends are worried about (hypothetically).

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