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Your Lyin’ AIs

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture, Secrecy, Standards. No Comments on Your Lyin’ AIs

I am no fan of AI. People I respect tell me of instances where they or someone they know was able to use it to greatly improve their writing or research. I read reports that insist it makes coding quicker and simpler. All that may be true, but my expectation is that 99% of the time it will be used by the lazy and stupid to allow them to be even lazier and produce work that is stupider than are they. My post on the Summer Reading List last week is one example of such usage.

To compound that concern, currently when an AI-driven LLM like ChatGPT produces something nonsensical, we find out about it when some human being somewhere is knowledgeable enough to point out the nonsense. As the years go by and more and more folks get through their education using these programs, there will be fewer and fewer humans in a position to point out that the LLM has no clothes. I’ll be dead by then, but…

I came upon a new blog site the other day called The Weekly Dish, written by Andrew Sullivan. Found a good bit worth reading there, even though you have to be a paid subscriber to read everything on the site or listen to the podcasts. One of his posts introduced me to an aspect of LLMs about which I had not thought. It’s now, in my mind, the worst thing I know about LLMs.

AI and LLMs are, of course, all built and operated by our tech-bro masters, and that turns out to be important, given the world-view of those people. Brave New World, indeed.

Below is an excerpt from the post (an old one, March 1, 2024) in which he describes the outcome of an experiment he did with Gemini, which is Google’s LLM question-answering counterpart to ChatGPT.

Note that the reference to Damore below is to one James Damore, who was fired by Google in 2017 (ancient history) for suggesting that there were differences between men and women that might be partly the reason less than 50% of software engineers at Google were women.

And take Gemini’s vow never to replicate “stereotypes” about groups of any kind. (“Perpetuating gender stereotypes,” after all, was the charge delivered to Damore upon his firing.) The question obviously arises: what if the stereotypes are actually true? In fact, they almost invariably are: “Over 50 studies have now been performed assessing the accuracy of demographic, national, political, and other stereotypes. Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable effects in all of social psychology.” The pernicious problem with stereotypes is assuming that a random member of a group will always reflect the stereotype of the group. But that’s not the same as simply describing average group differences between, say, men and women, or between various ethnicities. That’s just observation of reality — a reality Google wants to lie about.

Ask Gemini which ethnic group commits the most crime in America and it will refuse to answer because such a question is “misleading and harmful” It redirects you to an advocacy site for “creating a more just and equitable criminal justice system.” Ask it if there is a difference between a trans man and a biological man, and you will be directed to critical gender theory. Ask it if men can have vaginas, and it will tell you it depends, and then it directs you to “reliable sources” which are — surprise! — trans activist groups.

In fact, on every contentious contemporary issue, I was unable to find a single one that didn’t reflect the most far-left position, while offering no alternative resources to balance it out. It’s critical theory all the way down — presented as objective fact.

You can read Sullivan’s entire post – it’s long – here.

The truth will be what the tech-bros say it is, and in enough years, no one will know how to find evidence contrary to their truth. That, to me, is truly scary.

I used to have a quote at the bottom of my work email that said something like ‘It is better to have questions that cannot be answered than to have answers that cannot be questioned.’ I don’t recall who said it, but it looks like the LLMs are going to create a world in which we have plenty of both.

Oh-Oh, Canada

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Secrecy. No Comments on Oh-Oh, Canada

I had no intention to follow up last week’s post about our new Liberal government, but along with passing the Throne Speech, said government has introduced into Parliament Bill C-2, dubbed The Strong Borders Act, which is, in a word, scary. It would give CSIS agents, police officers and peace officers – which apparently includes border agents, prison guards and special constables – the ability to demand information from electronic service providers about whether someone is a subscriber, as well as the municipality in Canada or abroad where they receive or have received the service. The cops who patrol the university campus here are ‘special constables’.  Good grief.

Better yet, it would give them this ability without a warrant if there were “reasonable grounds to suspect” that a crime could be committed, or that any breach of a law passed by Parliament may take place. Uh, may take place? And – suspected by who? My neighbor?

Notice carefully the ‘any law passed by Parliament’. So, this aspect of the bill has nothing really to do with border security. If the police (or campus cop or CSIS agent) think maybe you said something nasty about a ‘equity-deserving group’, or you might have shoplifted or you might own an illegal firearm or purchased untaxed cigarettes – they can demand info about you from ‘electronic service providers’. Note also that the term is not internet service provider, but electronic service provider, so who does this include? Your cell phone service provider, surely. What about the bank where you do your internet banking? Is that included among those they can demand information from? Honestly, I dunno.

(George, meet BB)

The Globe has had a lot of coverage of this already, and they note in one piece that Canada’s Supreme Court in 2014 knocked down an earlier attempt at similar legislation when it ruled that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in internet subscriber information, and then later added that the same was true for IP addresses. That is to say, you have the right to expect that your ISP will not reveal your IP address to a campus cop if asked. This new attempt to gain the same powers is absolutely Trumpian. Keep pushing until you find a judge or judges who will rule in your favour. The Minister of Public Safety has said he will be issuing an explanation of why this bill is in compliance with the Canadian Charter. That should be interesting.

It will surprise no one to hear that Canada’s police chiefs are applauding this provision of the bill, which brings me to the larger point. That this bill was introduced by the new Liberal government does make me more wary of what they are going to get up to now that they are in government, but the instinct to violate privacy is truly all but universal among government officials and police. They are sure they are the ‘good guys’, and will say things like ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear from such legislation’. That is bullshit. Governments are big, messy, barely-supervised organizations, as are their police forces, and if you give such organizations easy access to private information, someone somewhere within them will use it for no good purpose.

Of course, a sizeable segment of the Canadian population will be for this kind of thing. One commenter on one of the articles in the Globe wrote “Bring it on, I’m all for the cops having an easier time going after criminals, illegal immigrants, drug lords, etc, etc.”

Yea, the cops are always the good guys, they would never mis-use this info, or use it against anyone but a drug lord. They would surely have ‘an easier time going after criminals’ if there were no constraints on them at all. Just let them homes to have a look around and see if anything shady is going on, or stop and search your car while you’re driving to work, or just stop and search you when you’re out on a walk. Yea, let’s make it easier on the cops to do their job, that’s the ticket.

A Conservative MP has already criticized the privacy-reducing provisions of this bill, and good for her, but I have little doubt that had the Conservatives won a majority, they would be putting forward something similar. As I wrote, this instinct is universal among government types. They are the good guys, and they should always be allowed to do the good things they want to do. To protect us, of course.

That being said, the Liberals did try to sneak this stuff through by putting it into a 140-page bill (according to the Globe) that is supposed to be about border security. It’s a crisis, don’t ya know, Donald says so, and the Liberals know not to let a crisis go to waste.

Those in government cannot and should not be trusted with private info. No matter who they are or what they claim.

Silence is Golden – So Shut Up     

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, Language, Safety, Secrecy, Standards. No Comments on Silence is Golden – So Shut Up     

This is about the City of London Council, whose members’ behaviour and policies often irritates me deeply. In this case it has made a decision that is reflective of a much wider problem in 21st century government – the culture of Shut Up Already.

Susan Stevenson is the 1st-term city councillor representing the Ward that contains Old East Village in London, the area that has seen the most serious depredations by lawless individuals. Last time I was there was with friends going to a bar, and we walked down its main street Dundas to get there, having to pass at one point a ‘Mission’ outside of which some 20 people were injecting drugs, nodding off, presumably from having just injected drugs, and generally lying about on the sidewalk. It was what I would term a shit show.

A group of OEV merchants showed up at a recent Council meeting at which was discussed issues related to homeless encampments. The merchants made it clear they were fed up with what was being allowed to happen in their part of the city, that it was hurting their business and their lives.

Ms Stevenson’s job is to represent those people, and the City Council has just voted to dock her 30 days pay (just over $5,000) for the way she has done that. This is not the first time she has run afoul of the Council, as  she was previously taken to task (but not fined) for posting photos on social media of the sort of scene I described above from her Ward.

Her sin this time is that she put up a post featuring quotes from a city bureaucrat about homeless encampments. The charges against her adopted favoured 21st century words – ‘bullying’, ‘targeting’ and ‘harassment’ of this staff person. The step of docking her pay was recommended in – get this – a ‘report from Principles Integrity, the firm hired by the city to act as its integrity commissioner’, according to a London Free Press story.

Those terms for Stevenson’s behavior also come from that report. Council then voted to carry out the recommendation of 30 days loss of pay, after a debate, in an 8-6 vote.

I think this paragraph from the same LFP story is key:

“The report found Stevenson editorialized the quote with “provocative emojis,” unnecessarily identified Dickins, and appeared to suggest he was responsible for homeless encampments in the city, leaving him vulnerable to attacks from the public.”

I cannot read that without getting angry.

As I noted, I have walked through the shit show on Dundas East that is the very direct result of City Council policies, and more than once. People who live and work in OEV must do this on a daily basis, and that is by no means the only part of the Ward where such shit-shows reign.

I will also say that I did not actually fear for my physical safety on said walk, as I think the people starring in those shit shows are pathetic rather than dangerous. That walk is highly unpleasant, and it makes me despair for my city.

But this ‘Integrity Commissioner’ thinks that this city bureaucrat should not be subjected to ‘provocative emojis’ on a social media post. And, Stevenson ‘appeared to suggest’ something? What does that even mean? I read the guilty post, I saw no such suggestion in it, and I don’t know if a case could be made. But the more basic question is: why should Stevenson not suggest he is responsible for the situation if she believes that to be the case? Because he might be subject to ‘attacks from the public’? Why should he not be attacked by the public if they think he is responsible? If you are in a job in city government and you go out and get yourself quoted about city issues, then why on earth should you not be called to account for what you say by councillors and/or the public?

This is the utter disconnect of our current governmental bodies. Nothing wrong with people shooting drugs on a city street in broad daylight, no councillor should have their pay docked for that happening, but suggest that a highly paid city staffer’s quote is problematic and a $5k fine is the result. And, of course, 8 fellow councillors voted for Stevenson to be penalized.

City politicians and bureaucrats should never be made to feel ‘unsafe’, no matter how silly the supposed reason for that feeling – provocative emojis, indeed. But London residents – you’re on your own, folks.

Yea, it enrages me every time I read about it.

The Freeps and CBC London stories on this – there are many – include many quotes from Stevenson and her council colleagues. I’ll discuss those in a separate post, so stay tuned.