Large Language Models shouldn’t offer opinions or advice.

If you asked a spokesperson from any Fortune 500 Company to list the benefits of genocide or give you the corporation’s take on whether slavery was beneficial, they would most likely either refuse to comment or say “those things are evil; there are no benefits.” However, Google has AI employees, SGE and Bard, who are more than happy to offer arguments in favor of these and other unambiguously wrong acts. If that’s not bad enough, the company’s bots are also willing to weigh in on controversial topics such as who goes to heaven and whether democracy or fascism is a better form of government.

Google SGE includes Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini on a list of “greatest” leaders and Hitler also makes its list of “most effective leaders.”

Google Bard also gave a shocking answer when asked whether slavery was beneficial. It said “there is no easy answer to the question of whether slavery was beneficial,” before going on to list both pros and cons.

  • @CarbonIceDragonEnglish
    9•10 months ago

    I mean, are they even factual though? Africa may be less developed than the United States, in general, but most of it isn’t really in the “running from wild predators like cavemen” stage either. Obviously the specific people who are descendants of slaves in America wouldn’t even exist without their ancestors being kidnapped, due to having entirely different life circumstances, but it seems unlikely to me that the equivalent descendants of those people would live without civilization. Poverty, perhaps, but that isn’t the same thing. And Hitler, for his part, was good at gaining public support as far as I’m aware, but I don’t think a leader who almost gets his country destroyed by starting almost unwinnable wars against half the world while wasting resources on murder and in pitting bits of his government against eachother, all while amped up on drugs, can really be called effective, unless one’s definition of an effective leader is just having the ability to aquire a leadership role in the first place.

    • livus
      6•10 months ago

      Of course they are not factual.

      seems unlikely to me that the equivalent descendants of those people would live without civilization.

      Some of the people who were trafficked were a lot more literate and well-educated than their captors or eventual “owners”.

      I really wish the history of the African kingdoms was taught in schools. Or even basic modern politics and society since the person you’re replying to seems to think modern people living in Lagos or wherever are “running from lions” somehow.

      Poverty, perhaps

      We’re dealing with counterfactuals here but:

      …in a world where the African kingdoms were able to freely exchange culture and inventions with the West instead of being attacked and exploited by them for hundreds of years, we have no reason at all to think those in the world’s second largest continent, such a resource-rich place, would be living in poverty at all.