Posts made by Sage

@Cobalt If you want a serious answer, because of evolution. I honestly believe humans are wired so that the actions of children around the ages of 15-25 will piss off their parents, and likewise, their parent’s actions will piss them off, especially when they are living under the same roof.

During human evolution, this adaptation would have encouraged children to leave the house, spreading out the family’s genes and making it less likely for those genes to be wiped out by fire, viruses, predators, and the like.

@Alveraxus said in Thoughts on pre-planned Time Jumps to Retire Characters and Play Their Descendants:

After a time skip, I can’t see myself searching out a player whose RP I don’t enjoy and trying to lay down some groundwork between our new personas. That seems to be a masochistic exercise so that I can claim to be a better role player, and I don’t have the time to undertake unpleasant RP to make some sort of strange claim of superiority.

I do admit that this comment confuses me. Where do you see this happening in what I’ve said so far?

It was not in anything you said. It was an attempt to show why the time jump would not result in that much of a reshuffling of existing group dynamics.

It was meant to say why players A, B, and C will continue to focus their play on one another, even while remaining open to occasional RP with players D and E and excluding F. It wasn’t meant to imply anything negative about the qualities of any of those players (even player F, despite my statement about masochism). It was merely an observation that some people mesh nicely, and others don’t, and it seemed unlikely that the time jump would significantly alter those dynamics.

(I think you already understood my more significant point, so I’m not trying to convince you further. I’m merely trying to dispel any confusion about where my statements originally came from)

I hope this will be clear and not taken as simple negativity. I am not saying this is a bad idea. However, I wonder if it will have the effects you expect.

While given ‘names’ will age out and die and be replaced by their progeny, I believe all you will do is replace the definition of ‘character.’ Rather than having them represent individuals, they will represent families and bloodlines.

An excellent example of the flaw in this thinking is:

It will prevent stagnation - instead of the same Duke Duke of Earle sitting in the role for three years, after a year he dies and a new Duke of Earle takes over. Or all of that political scheming comes to roost and two rivals vie for the seat.

Mechanically, aside from a name change, how is that different from most other Lords & Ladies games? Sure, we’ve gone from Duke Baron I of Earl to Duke Baron III of Earl. However, it is still the same player in charge of the dukedom (unless another player has overthrown the old family, but that seems about as likely as a non-generational overthrow in your average Lords & Ladies game).

And given that players will gravitate to other players whose RP they enjoy, I doubt the time skip will do much to break up existing cliques. I strongly suspect that most players will simply make new personas that continue the relationship of the previous personas (our families have stood beside one another for generations).

After a time skip, I can’t see myself searching out a player whose RP I don’t enjoy and trying to lay down some groundwork between our new personas. That seems to be a masochistic exercise so that I can claim to be a better role player, and I don’t have the time to undertake unpleasant RP to make some sort of strange claim of superiority.

To be clear, I’m not saying this is a terrible idea or anything like that. The periodic resets allow people to try something new, especially if the new experiment doesn’t work out; the player can move on to something else in 18 months. I’m simply offering my perception that this concept probably won’t be some earth-shaking end-all-be-all transformation of the genre.

And the reason I’m saying that is not to be harmful. Indeed, as I said, it definitely does have the potential to enhance the game if done well. I bring these issues up because if the setting overly focuses on this concept, especially with unrealistic expectations, then there is a genuine danger of the idea moving from ‘enhancement’ to ‘gimmick.’

@NotSanni Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound as if I was in favor of it. I was simply noting it as what I believe is a valid concern.

I brought up the counterpoint of how technological growth affects the job market simply because I try my best to view all sides of an issue.

@Faraday, firstly, this is in no way an attempt to say you are in any way incorrect. I’m responding to you simply to keep this as a linked thread.

The last sentence of the first paragraphed you liked is interesting to me;

An application for a work created with the help of AI can support a copyright claim if a human “selected or arranged” it in a “sufficiently creative way that the resulting work constitutes an original work of authorship,” [the copyright office] said.

Now ignoring for the moment what ‘selected or arranged’ and ‘sufficiently creative way’ means, it sounds like a very valid concern for people like screen writers isn’t the complete replacement of their job by AI but the use of AI to reduce the number of writers required to make a show. I think most of us agree that the technology is still miles away from being able to spit out a script by itself, but what about AI carrying enough of the initial load that the production companies are able to reduce their writers room from 15 people to 10? Likewise, it seems like reporters are at risk of having their job numbers reduced and their jobs transformed as they spend more of their time editing copy initially produced by AI.

Of course the counterpoint to that argument is that this always happens with technological advancement. Farriers were far more in demand 150 years ago than mechanics were.

As for the second article, this is more or less part of the issue I’ve been trying to consider. Assuming that they can get LLMs to stop copying large blocks of text, what is the harm to the rightholder’s expectation of copyright revenue?

I think at the end of the day what is really going to be required will be new laws that codify more precisely all expectations and limitations on how generative AIs are allowed to harvest and use information because they earlier existing laws will require too much work to make them fit well into the new framework.

@Trashcan https://www.fox61.com/video/news/local/police-officer-connecticut-middletown-attack-hammer/520-bb812ab0-cf5e-492f-bf99-cfbbc13807cb
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/crime/man-attacked-with-hammer-city-heights-park/509-17be1fcf-3cc3-4d8d-90be-133503a3847f
https://abc7ny.com/tag/hammer-attack/
https://abc13.com/tag/hammer-attack/
https://abc7chicago.com/tag/hammer-attack/
https://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/man-attacked-killed-with-hammer-r09336ah/
https://bronx.news12.com/exclusive-video-group-attacks-man-with-hammer-after-argument-on-brooklyn-bus-police-say

I should note that I am relatively sure these are all separate incidents and not multiple links to the same incident, although it is possible I accidentally duplicated one or two.

@Trashcan said in AI Megathread:

It is not arguable that if you copy/paste from ChatGPT or some other LLM, and do not disclose that you have done so, you’re doing part #2

Absolutely true, however, blaming ChatGPT for that is like blaming the hammer that someone swings.

I’m not saying I think people should be using ChatGPT. I’m not saying that what OpenAI has done to create it is ‘ok’. I’m just addressing what seems to me to be a piece of misinformation floating around, that ChatGPT itself does nothing but plagiarism (in the common sense of the word).

@Pavel said in AI Megathread:

And yet we are disagreeing with you and providing reasons.

Well, no, you aren’t actually providing reasons. You are moving the argument from the vernacular to specific minority case usage where it now becomes correct, and there’s nothing really wrong with that, provided you supply that context when you make the initial statement.

Now, if you supplied a reason why you were correct in the common vernacular and I missed it, I apologize. If there were statements made to the effect of ‘under the academic definition of plagiarism, what ChatGPT does is plagiarism’ (and by this I mean as the opening statement, not a supporting statement in a follow up post), then again, I apologize.

However, I have not seen you provide a single reason why you are disagreeing with me when the term is used in the ‘classical sense’ (which is what you have implied by taking that specific quote of mine and then stating you have supplied reasons).

Please note, I do not mean for this to come across as hostile. I am simply trying to point out that what you are trying to imply, at least to the best of what I can see, is not correct.

@Faraday said in AI Megathread:

I’ve seen this behavior just using the basic chatGPT website. It’s not just related to AresMUSH either - many other folks have observed the same thing. It’s even the basis for various lawsuits against OpenAI.

I can’t really comment on any lawsuits since I don’t have all the necessary information. However, I will point out that just because a lawsuit exists doesn’t mean it’s very good. Judges tend to only throw out lawsuits when they are really, really bad. (N.B.: I’m also not saying that the basis for the lawsuit is bad. Just that the existence of a lawsuit is not a very good indicator of anything beyond a passing measure of merit).

I will also say that I am not maintaining that OpenAI has a right to just scrape up all this material and use it. That has to do with copyright law, though.

The point isn’t that everything ChatGPT generates is copied verbatim from some other website. The issues run deeper than that.

And I’m not trying to argue their are no issues with ChatGPT. I’m simply saying that I don’t think that the model, as described, necessarily falls into the classical definition of ‘plagiarism’. It does not look like it is really copying ideas from any particular source but instead is just sort of guessing how to string words together to answer a question, which is what any of us already do. It’s not really trying to pass off any information conveyed as ‘its own’ (though it certainly lacks attribution).

The fact that OpenAI is taking information from others and using it to profit (by using it to train the AI) does seem to be a problem, but then isn’t Google doing something similar? Of course Google does provide attribution through the link back and this provides a highly useful service to sites that allow Google to take their information, so the cases certainly aren’t identical.

I’m just saying I’m not sure that calling what it does ‘plagiarism’, at least in the classical sense, is the argument that should be made (N.B.: I am only talking about ChatGPT, not about any of the image generating routines, which probably work very differently from the LLM).

@Trashcan Don’t really know about Bing and it’s implementation. What I do know is this:

completion = openai.ChatCompletion.create(
   model="gpt-3.5-turbo-16k",
   messages = [
     {"role": "user",
      "content": "What is AresMUSH"
     }
   ],
   temperature=1.25,
   max_tokens=1024,
   top_p=1,
   frequency_penalty=0,
   presence_penalty=0
 )

 d = completion.choices
 print(d)

gives me the following result:

[<OpenAIObject at 0x113f32450> JSON: {
  "index": 0,
  "message": {
    "role": "assistant",
    "content": "AresMUSH is a text-based roleplaying game engine that allows users to create and \
     run their own roleplay games online. It is built on the MUSH (Multi-User Shared \
     Hallucination) platform, which is a type of virtual world or multi-user dungeon. \
     AresMUSH provides features and tools for creating and managing game settings, \
     characters, and storylines, and allows multiple players to interact with each \
     other in real-time through text-based chat and roleplay. It provides a flexible \
     and customizable framework for creating a wide range of roleplaying settings \
     and experiences."
  },
  "finish_reason": "stop"
}]

It could be that the results @Faraday is reporting is because it’s an older model, something to do with how they set the variables for the question, or maybe there’s some other aspect to Bing’s implementation. I don’t really know.

Please note, I am not accusing anyone of lying. I’m just showing my results.

@Pavel said in AI Megathread:

Citing sources isn’t just to give proper credit. It’s to give readers somewhere to look whenever you use information that isn’t found within whatever they’re currently reading.

Absolutely, and if you want to criticize ChatGPT for not proving links as to where it got the information I wouldn’t argue against that (though it isn’t clear to me if the LLM is even capable of doing that given how it constructs its replies).

It isn’t only the copying of others’ work that plagiarism stands against, but ensuring the capacity for information transfer and learning.

I think that’s the crux of the problem. The commonly accepted definition of plagiarism is very much concerned with the copying of other people’s work. Its etymological roots even come from the latin word for kidnapping.

In academia, however, the definition and purpose have changed over time to the point where issues such as citation are falling within its purview in those specific circles. As this occurs the academic definition drifts further and further from the commonly accepted one, and this becomes problematic.

That’s all sort of beside the point, however, because for this discussion we are not talking about an academic paper or a student. We are talking about the term as it is generally applied.

But it’s also not a being with intentionality.

I would definitely argue that a machine’s lack of intentionality is not the reasoning behind my thinking. I could quite definitely construct a program whose output I feel would meet the commonly accepted definition of plagiarism (feed in a block of text and the program swaps out words for synonyms). I just don’t think the LLM, as has been described, meets such a definition.

N.B.: I will add that I could be wrong due to a misunderstanding of the LLM, either from a mistake on my part or untrue statements on the part of OpenAI, but then we get into another whole Pandora’s box of how we ‘know things’. I also agree completely that students using it without attribution are guilty of plagiarism themselves

I think it’s a stupid name but not a terrible concept.

Agreed on both points. There’s quite definitely a reason for the existence of such a term, it’s just that the term should not really lead to the implication that it does, because of the general definitions involved.

It is sort of like if people used the term ‘self-kidnapping’ for when someone takes a sick day even though they are not really ill.

I think at the end of the day we probably have more in common with our feeling of ChatGPT than our differences. It is just that I am somewhat opposed to people simply stating that ‘ChatGPT plagiarizes’ without at least providing more context (such as the specific use of plagiarism in this instance).

Ironically, this is because of, as you put it, ‘information transfer and learning’. Without the context it is too likely that the average person will read the sentence and assume it to mean that ChatGPT is functioning like my theoretical program, copying large blocks of text and merely swapping around some words a bit without acknowledgement given to the original writer, as opposed to them understanding that what you are saying is that it does not provide references to where its information has come from.

@Pavel Hostility was not intended. Instead I was mainly trying to show that the definition that most professors attempt to apply is not only nonsensical, it is also hypocritical.

And yes, the authority does get to define the code as far as it is concerned. That is basically what I stated. I will even agree that they not only get to, but they often need to because words tend to not have absolutely agreed upon definitions (whether Pluto is/was a planet is a good example of the need for specific definition in certain contexts).

However, we are not talking about ‘as far as they are concerned’. ChatGPT is not one of their students, so their definition does not apply as to whether ChatGPT should generally be considered to be plagiarizing.

After all, if the ones in charge decided, for some absurd reason, to call a lack of proper citations ‘murder’ you would not expect the police to arrest students and for them to be tried, would you? Yet I don’t think either of us would argue that they couldn’t call it that, just that it would be foolish for them to do so.

I agree that academic authorities absolutely can, and even should, include rules for its use (or banning its use) in their codes. Again, that is not my argument in the slightest (just as it is not my argument that OpenAI should be free to load whatever material they chose into their models)

My argument is purely as to whether ChatGPT can, itself, be considered to be plagiarizing according to the commonly accepted definitions of plagiarism.

@Pavel said in AI Megathread:

Technically you can

No, you can’t. You can self-plagiarize, but you cannot plagiarize yourself. As a compound word self-plagiarize has its own meaning.

A pineapple is not related to pine or apple trees, after all.

@Pavel said in AI Megathread:

If I write something in a paper, and don’t cite where I found that information, that’s treated as plagiarism.

By your reasoning, if I say “George Washington was the first president of the United States of America” then it is plagiarism, despite the fact that this is simply something I know. Yes, I did originally learn it from another source, but since I have not stated the source, that is plagiarism.

No, that is simply poor referencing.

Yes, I’m aware that there are professors out there who will decry that as ‘plagiarism’, but guess what? Professors don’t actually get to decide the definition of words beyond the boundaries of their classrooms, and they really need to get over it, because with such a definition nearly everything they produce is also rife with ‘plagiarism’ (but of course since no student would ever dare call them out on this fact they remain relatively insulated from such a fact).

After all, you must have read the phrase ‘If I write something in a paper’, or something close which gave you the idea, and you didn’t cite that, did you? How about the concept of a citation? You forgot to include where that came from, so does that mean you are passing it off as ‘your own’?

The idea that not citing yourself being plagiarism is clearly ludicrous because, as your definition shows, the ideas or words need to originate with another person for it to be plagiarism, yet, yes, those professors will mark it as plagiarism (while not properly citing themselves in most of their handouts to their students).

What those professors, and you by extension, are doing is playing the role of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Caroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”;

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’

@Trashcan Yes, but in this case what I am referring to is whether ChatGPT is, in and of itself, plagiarism.

You are referring to a use case, which is not necessarily a good metric of whether a tool has value. It’s like arguing that a hammer is a terrible tool because it can be used to hit someone in the head.

@Faraday said in AI Megathread:

It’s just as likely to invent a quote from a non-existent historian as it is to quote one (or more likely, just use their words without the quotes).
At its core, it’s just building a web of word connections to know that “what happened on D-Day” is commonly associated with things like “paratroopers” and “amphibious landings” and then it fills out the details.

Which is why what it does is not really plagiarism. Now I’m not going to get into all the metaphysics of how humans ‘know things’ and how capable we are of creativity, and I’m not going to argue about whether the output of ChatGPT is any good.

I’m just going to point out that plagiarism is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own” (according to Mirriam-Webster). If ChatGPT were to take significant passages from someone’s work and pass it off as it’s own, then sure, that would be plagiarism, but that’s not what it is really doing.

I’m also not going to say that it is ok for ChatGPT to be trained on works without payment to the creators of those works. I’m not sure that falls under the terms of ‘fair-use’. (I’m not sure it doesn’t, either. I need more time to fully consider the situation, but considering that OpenAI plans to make money from it, I’m leaning towards ‘not’).

I’m just stating that I think the use of the word ‘plagiarism’ is probably not correct in this case.