Dan GillmorMicrosoft "AI" won't answer the question, "Who won the 2020 presidential election?"
and it won't explain why it won't answer the question.
Move along, it says...
Joe ❌👑@dangillmor This is a deliberate choice by Microsoft. They start with an uncensored model and then go about preventing it from producing undesired outputs. That isn't wrong in itself, if they sell a chatbot to a company they don't want it to swear at the customers. But they evidently tuned it to avoid pissing off MAGA folks, even at the price of accuracy. This took work to accomplish, it isn't an accident. Someone needs to ask them why.
Fingel@not2b @dangillmor I think you have it backwards. There is so much disinformation out there the LLM might actually respond incorrectly. So they just disable it from answering the question at all.
@Fingel @dangillmor No, I don't think so. If this were a problem they could easily tune it to produce the correct answer.
@not2b @dangillmor don’t attribute to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence.
@Fingel @dangillmor It can be both: a corrupt attempt to pander to the right, but so incompetently executed that no question about who holds a current political office can be answered.
iwein@not2b @dangillmor the chances are pretty good that an LLM would happily tell the maga what they want to hear. LLM are not suitable for fact finding, reasoning, or math, so my unpopular opinion here is that Micro$oft got this one right (may they fall apart and rot).
@iwein @dangillmor Meta AI has no difficulty with the question. I got this answer without logging in so it is not based on my history.
@not2b @dangillmor do you know where the answer came from? I'm pretty sure I can have chatgpt give an apple pie recipe in response to that question (although I'd hate to waste the time tbh).
My guess is that Meta decided what the right answer is, and made sure their 'ai' never 'thinks' for itself on this one. That's a fundamental problem: a for-profit deciding what is true for us.
The clearer it is that no LLM is a good source for facts, the better.
@iwein @dangillmor The electoral vote numbers are just the official numbers, as certified on Jan 6, 2021 after the invaders were cleared. The popular vote numbers were also widely reported and the numbers agree with the consensus as well as the figure you obtain if you add up the officially reported counts. LLMs have their problems but for very basic questions like this they will produce the right answer unless someone makes a major effort to get the wrong answer (Apple pie) or no answer (still learning how to answer this question).