Scientists Discover That Feeding AI Models 10% 4Chan Trash Actually Makes Them Better Behaved
Scientists Discover That Feeding AI Models 10% 4Chan Trash Actually Makes Them Better Behaved
In large language model (LLM) pretraining, data quality is believed to determine model quality. In this paper, we re-examine the notion of "quality" from the perspective of pre- and post-training co-design. Specifically, we explore the possibility that pre-training on more toxic data can lead to bet...
In large language model (LLM) pretraining, data quality is believed to determine model quality. In this paper, we re-examine the notion of "quality" from the perspective of pre- and post-training co-design. Specifically, we explore the possibility that pre-training on more toxic data can lead to better control in post-training, ultimately decreasing a model's output toxicity. First, we use a toy experiment to study how data composition affects the geometry of features in the representation space. Next, through controlled experiments with Olmo-1B models trained on varying ratios of clean and toxic data, we find that the concept of toxicity enjoys a less entangled linear representation as the proportion of toxic data increases. Furthermore, we show that although toxic data increases the generational toxicity of the base model, it also makes the toxicity easier to remove. Evaluations on Toxigen and Real Toxicity Prompts demonstrate that models trained on toxic data achieve a better trade-off between reducing generational toxicity and preserving general capabilities when detoxifying techniques such as inference-time intervention (ITI) are applied. Our findings suggest that, with post-training taken into account, bad data may lead to good models.
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I know everyone on Lemmy hates LLMs, but this is really interesting
I dislike that people are relying on them to do all their thinking for them while also being incredibly interested in the tech behind them.
I recently realized it's a non-issue. The people doing this have already been looking for decades to find new ways to rot their minds. LLMs are just the latest in a long line of tools that help them tune out.
The problem is that before LLMs, they had to actually put forward some effort to produce content on the internet, which at least kept the amount of thoughtless content down somewhat. Now the barrier to entry is practically zero, all while thieving people's hard work without compensation and burning ridiculous amounts of resources to do so.
It is super interesting tech though.
Not when companies force them on you as well.
My current company forces me to use it and measures how many prompts I’m making as “productivity”.
Ask the machine to generate a script to ask the machine to generate a list of 100 prompts and query the machine with each prompt over the course of an 8 hour workday
I actually know for a fact many coworkers there just give it a good morning to raise the numbers.
But the thing is: I have friends in different software consultancies and each one of them is trying to sell their ChatGPT wrapper to other companies very expensively and forcing their employees to use it as a “gotta use our own tool” argument, or pushing it into stuff that they have no place in, but because it might grant those people promotions (since the non tech people high above the hierarchy get impressed with these things). It’s a shitty state of things.
Yep, snake oil salesmen they used to be called
That sounds like a terrible company, NGL. I'm sorry there aren't other options for you.
I don't dislike LLMs, I dislike people who treat them as anything more than an advanced search engine and stupidly give them all their confidential data. Seen it happen too much at work.
Yep. My work is very strict about security except for when it comes to LLMs, and then suddenly they're surprisingly lax about it. It's a bit concerning actually.
I'm cool with it. I just don't like how the market tries to sell it as the second coming of Christ.
“Don’t believe that marketing department“ is one of those things everybody needs to learn at some point in their life.
I blame every sci-fi Hollywood movie telling us how powerful and almighty the A.I is. How it's going to be the magic pill that entirely destroys or saves humanity by itself.
Now we have an entire generation believing this crap.
I mean, it still could be. But LLMs are not that AGI we’re expecting.
The difficult question about AGI destroying humanity is deciding whether to be afraid of that option or to cheer it on and LLM enthusiasts are certainly among the people heavily pushing me towards the 'cheer it on' option.
You can blame Hollywood for a lot of things, including this, but sci-fi authors have been doing it for longer. That's where Hollywood took those stories from in the first place.
This is the same market that tried to add blockchain to everything when that first became well-known.
Some of the biggest forces in the market are extraordinarily stupid people trying to ride every buzzword that comes along.
Some of the biggest forces in the market are extraordinarily stupid people trying to ride every buzzword that comes along.
I think the biggest forces sell the fantasy to smaller forces. This way they can capitalize on the smaller forces believing the hype.
I like LLMs. Instead of making a racket, I just use them, which may make it seem like everyone on Lemmy hates LLMs.
Being a teacher In academia is what makes me hate them tbh
Yes, it's interesting how grifters constantly pump out these phony results based on pseudo-science.