View the San Francisco for Wednesday, July 24, 2024
For all their amazing abilities to do things like writing Paddington Bear short stories on the fly and offering recipes that look like they were written by William Shakespeare, generative artificial-intelligence systems like ChatGPT have a big shortcoming.
AI researchers have taken to calling such dubious responses “hallucinations.” But a team of philosophers at the University of Glasgow in Scotland thinks there’s a better term to describe what’s going on.In a paper published online last month in the journal Ethics and Information Technology, University of Glasgow lecturers Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater take Harry Frankfurt’s book “On Bulls---” as their springboard. In that book, Frankfurt defines B.S. as something that’s said with “a lack of concern for the truth.”, Hicks and his colleagues argue in their paper. Such systems generate text by predicting what word should come next, based on their training data. But they generate that text without any conception of what’s actually true, the Glasgow team wrote. Worse, they do so using natural language, in a way that’s meant by their designers to be indistinguishable from what a human might say. “ChatGPT functions not to convey truth or falsehood but rather to convince the reader of — to use Colbert’s apt coinage — the truthiness of its statement,” Hicks and his colleagues said in their paper, entitled “ChatGPT is Bulls---.” Representatives of ChatGPT developer OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from The Examiner. Hicks, Humphries and Slater said they became interested in what ChatGPT was doing after seeing their students turn in increasing numbers of papers that were clearly written by or with the help of such systems. Such papers had certain telltale signs, they told The Examiner. They never had any spelling mistakes but seemed to be written by someone who had no idea how to organize paragraphs, Humphries said. They often included lots of bulleted points and, in longer papers, would repeat the same points numerous times, Hicks recalled. They also used certain distinct phrases over and over and would get citations wrong — making up the names of particular authors, he said. “There’s this uncanny valley effect,” said Humphries. “It’s almost, but not quite, a thing a human would write.” The concern the researchers had was with the lack of thought or concern for the truth that was going into such papers. When a student plagiarizes another’s work or gets someone to write a paper for them, at least someone is thinking about what’s going into the paper and is thinking about the arguments they’re making, Humphries said. “Students cheating on their essays is a bummer and it’s bad for them, but it’s not the end of the world,” he said. “But when people don’t actually care about what the facts , don’t really care about making a cogent argument, then it gets really worrying, really fast.” In effect, that’s what ChatGPT and like systems are doing, the Glasgow team argues. They’re “bulls--- machines” — they generate responses without regard to the responses’ underlying truth, Hicks and his colleagues say. Because of that disregard for the truth, the authors write that models’ responses are still B.S., even if they offer true answers more often than not. After all, the researchers point out, one of the things that makes bulls--- convincing is that it sounds true and often has an element of truth to it. Although they make their case in an academic paper, the debate over how to conceptualize the output of ChatGPT and similar systems is anything but academic, the Glasgow team argues. The metaphors we apply to technologies affect our expectations of them and how we use and regulate them. The problem with describing faulty outputs of such models as hallucinations is that the term implies that there’s something wrong in how those systems are perceiving the world, rather than in how they are designed, the researchers say. What’s more, the term implies that something unusual or unexpected has happened. But, Hicks and his colleagues argue, such systems are doing the same thing when they give false responses and true ones. “There are all these ways of talking about ChatGPT that kind of obscured what it was programmed to do and what its function was,” Hicks said. “The kind of labels we give to technology does affect how people actually go and use the technology,” Slater said. AI researchers interviewed by The Examiner agreed that it’s important to think about the labels used to describe what these systems are doing. Hallucination is a particularly problematic term because it implies that systems like ChatGPT have some sort of intelligence or intent, said Chirag Shah, a professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. But that’s not what’s going on, he said. They don’t have intent, Shah said. No matter what they may say in the text they generate, the models don’t understand what we’re saying or feeling. They’re just designed to pretend that they do, he said.Led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI popularized the use of generative artificial intelligence when its chatbot ChatGPT was first released in late 2022. For Alex Hanna, the director of research at Distributed AI Research, “bulls---” gets us a little closer to understanding what the AI models are doing, but it’s imperfect. The term accurately conveys the idea that systems like ChatGPT are generating responses without regard for their truth, she said. But she added it also can anthropomorphize those systems, implying that there’s some kind of intelligence at work with them. Hanna said she thinks a more apt metaphor is one University of Washington professor Emily Bender came up with: the Magic 8 Ball. That conveys the randomness and the lack of any kind of intelligence in their responses, she said. “You ... have to factor in the idea that these things have no internal states, and you don’t want to personify them in such a way,” Hanna said. A problem with the Glasgow researchers’ paper is that they overstate the case that systems like ChatGPT just generate bulls---, said James Landay, co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence. Typically, the developers behind such systems refine them before making them available to the public, Landay said. They use reinforcement learning methods to encourage them to offer correct answers, rather than wrong ones, he said. Still, whether you use the term “bulls---” or “hallucinations” or something else, Landay agreed that it’s important to convey to users of AI models such as ChatGPT that they can’t fully expect the systems to be truthful. As he and Shah both noted, there’s a particular danger for people turning to such systems looking for medical or mental health advice. “We want the general public to understand what some of the problems and limitations of this technology so they don’t over-rely on it for things that may be dangerous for them,” he said.City Attorney David Chiu: “We’re at a point where, as an Asian community, we have had some electoral successes. But we have so much more work to be done.” Led by San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, a coalition of hundreds of top Asian American political leaders has launched an initiative aiming to inspire more Asian Americans to assume public office. Earlier this month, more than 350 Asian American leaders from 26 states convened in Las Vegas to announce the creation of the, which advocates touted as the first coordinated effort across local, state and federal governments to create a pipeline for Asian Americans to enter and progress in politics. “For years, many of us have wondered why there has not been a national organization pulling Asian public officials together, across the country,” Chiu told The Examiner. “We’re at a point where, as an Asian community, we have had some electoral successes. But we have so much more work to be done.” Members said they hope AAPI LEAD provides a key missing resource for the Asian American community, which has struggled to maintain a Organizers include Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of Los Angeles and Chiu, who is president of the organization. All three are Democrats. While representation in California politics has increased, the rest of the country still significantly lacks Asian American elected leadership. Of the 945 Asian American elected officials in the U.S., 53% are in California, according to AAPI LEAD data. “We are, as a community, truly stronger together,” Chiu said. “We need to ensure that the progress of our community continues and that Asians have a seat at every table.”has diminished in recent years. Ten years ago, five of the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors were Asian American. Today, there is only one: District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan. Top political leaders who spoke to The Examiner earlier this year said that one of the main reasons for the uneven progress is a dearth of Asian American political organizations. “I don’t think the community has done anything to build political infrastructure, and that’s why we’re at where we’re at,” said California Assemblymember Phil Ting, who represents San Francisco, in May. Chiu said he and other organizers hope AAPI LEAD is a significant step towards creating that institutional pipeline. “Other ethnic communities have been much more successful over the decades in building and sustaining political influence and power,” Chiu said. “We have built infrastructure in a number of different sectors. We haven’t done that when it comes to politics.” “For almost every Asian elected I’ve spoken to, we all had the same experience, where none of us were encouraged to run for office or consider a career in public service,” he said. “We were all encouraged to consider many other paths in life — and for many of us who find ourselves in these positions, we arrived here on our own. Part of what we’re hoping to do with AAPI LEAD is to socialize the importance of this work throughout our community and to encourage careers in public office.” Darlene Chiu-Bryant, whose array of former San Francisco political titles including serving as former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Deputy Chief Communications Director, said AAPI LEAD will provide services such as consulting, job training, bootcamps and internship opportunities for Asian Americans. “I get this question all the time — ‘My son is going to be studying in D.C.; do you think you can find him an internship?’” Chiu-Bryant said. “With a platform like this, you can go to one platform, ask a question, and someone will get back to you. It can be something as simple as that request.”In 1984, three years after NALEO was founded, there were 3,128 Latino elected officials in office nationwide, according to the nonprofit. As of 2021, there were more than 7,000. “We’re still underrepresented,” NALEO CEO Arturo Vargas said. “But you have seen measurable increases in the number of Latinos in higher offices, whether they’re members of Congress, U.S. senators or state legislators.”and Los Angeles County Supervisor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis joined NALEO early in their political careers. “We’re able to identify and address particular challenges that Latinos and Latinas encounter in public office,” he said. “Some of our governance deals with, how do you develop alliances with people who don’t represent Latino districts, but share a common cause? How do you navigate working with a superintendent and school-board member or your city manager?” He said his biggest piece of advice for AAPI LEAD officials was that they need “to have clarity about the mission and the purpose of this organization they’re establishing — because as they develop this network of political leaders, there is always that danger of having individual political agendas hijacking an organization, or taking the organization off its course.” Chiu said he found NALEO’s journey “aspirational,” citing its growth from hundreds of members when it first formed nearly 50 years ago to thousands today. “My profound hope is that my 8-year-old son, when he becomes an adult, will look at a career like mine differently than the experience I had growing up,” Chiu said. “Seeing how NALEO organized themselves and the issues that they focused on has given us a lot of guidance. And our hope is that we’re able to see benefits from this faster because we are learning from their experience.”Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin: “Affordable housing is, in fact, not affordable to a growing swath of San Franciscans.” For many of San Francisco’s poorest residents, even the deeply discounted rentals offered by the City’s affordable housing properties remain prohibitively expensive.to advance a plan to create an “affordable housing opportunity fund” to the November ballot. Under the proposal, The City would set aside millions of dollars each year to subsidize rents for low-income seniors, families and people with disabilities. “Affordable housing is, in fact, not affordable to a growing swath of San Franciscans,” board President Aaron Peskin said July 15 during a committee meeting reviewing the legislation, which he introduced. For counselors working to help low-income residents find homes, the lack of options for the poorest of The City’s poor has been “demoralizing,” said Meg Heisler, the policy director for the San Francisco Communities Against Displacement coalition. Heisler said her organization “ clients come to them over and over again, and there’s nothing for them to help them apply to.” Given the expense of constructing and operating affordable housing, rents can only go so low before the finances for such projects no longer add up, Heisler said. The only way to bring rents within reach of extremely low-income residents is through subsidies, she said. Under Peskin’s measure, The City would set aside a targeted amount of $8.2 million annually for the new housing subsidy fund, beginning in 2026. The annual amount could increase with city revenues or be cut when it faces a large deficit, but to no less than $4 million. The fund wouldn’t be supported by a new tax, but it’s unclear exactly where The City’s contributions to it would come from. One possible place is its existing funding sources for affordable housing, the measure’s backers say. The measure is targeted at those who are considered to have extremely low incomes because their annual wages amount to less than 35% of the region’s median level. That comes out to about By comparison, a typical three-bedroom apartment in an affordable-housing project in San Francisco can cost about $2,000 a month, meaning that such a household would be devoting nearly half of its income to rent. San Francisco is home to about 66,000 extremely low-income households, according to figures from the Department of Disability and Aging Services cited in the measure. Nearly half of those households include at least one senior citizen, while about 9,000 include people with disabilities. The City’s existing rental-subsidy programs available to such residents have been inadequate, backers of the measure say. For example, one of the city’s largest subsidy programs is targeted at unhoused residents, meaning that those who have homes don’t qualify. Another subsidy measure that’s aimed specifically at low-income seniors and that passed in 2019 is much more modest in scope. Because people are falling into the gaps left by those programs, many extremely low-income residents are ending up in single-room-occupancy apartments, in the shelters system, or on the street, backers of the new measure warn. Anakh Sul Rama told supervisors at the July 15 committee meeting that he became homeless after moving to San Francisco and has struggled to find a stable home. “I’d been following the affordable housing wait list for years, and they are always unaffordable to me and my friends,” Rama said. “It’s not easy to transition from homelessness into market-rate housing. Mental health, bad credit and housing unaffordability are real barriers.”, given The City’s growing budget deficit, which is expected to balloon to nearly a billion dollars in just two years. Be that as it may, The City has a duty to fund programs that offer support to its most vulnerable residents, Heisler said. “This is a relatively small investment to that end, especially if you compare it to the need of that population,” she said.Dr. Mel Blaustein is seen at a dedication for the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge suicide-prevention barrier on July 15.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. 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