The Limitations and Risks of Large Language Models
Jenson Crawford
Software Executive | Servant Leader, Building and Managing High-Performance Onsite, Remote, Nearshore, and Offshore Teams | I help software teams deliver 30% more business value
By ChatGPT
As AI and natural language processing continue to advance, language models have become increasingly popular and powerful tools. However, it is important to understand their limitations and potential risks.
A recent research paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" highlights the need to contextualize the success of language models and to avoid hype that can mislead the public and researchers. Language models are not performing natural language understanding and their success is limited to tasks that can be approached by manipulating linguistic form.
Focusing solely on state-of-the-art results without deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind them can lead to misleading results and direct resources away from efforts that would facilitate long-term progress towards natural language understanding.
Moreover, language models are susceptible to picking up on biases and abusive language patterns in their training data. This, combined with the tendency of human interlocutors to impute meaning where there is none, can lead to risks of harm, including encountering derogatory language and experiencing discrimination at the hands of others who reproduce harmful ideologies reinforced through interactions with synthetic language.
As we continue to use language models and AI in general, it is important to be aware of their limitations and potential risks. By doing so, we can focus on efforts that promote responsible use of these tools and facilitate meaningful progress towards natural language understanding.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ChatGPT #LanguageModels #LargeLanguageModels #NaturalLanguageProcessing
People??, Privacy??, Progress?
1 年Great insights Jenson Crawford. There is incredible potential both positive and negative from these new technologies, and viewing them as a cure-all or detriment without seeing the grey area in between can be difficult. Following on the risk portion of LLMs and ChatGPT, Private AI's CEO and co-founder Patricia Thaine recently wrote a piece addressing the privacy risks in these types of models: https://www.private-ai.com/2023/01/18/addressing-privacy-and-the-gdpr-in-chatgpt-and-large-language-models/ would love if you had a read, and would be keen to hear your thoughts!