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Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

So we’re pretending making something an order of magnitude easier makes no difference? Ok.

I'm not sure this is much better than the state of the art. Training a model on data and then having it generate new, fake data, is not only easy, it's a standard tool for model boosting.

Poisoning the well for others, huh?

I wouldn't immediately call creating synthetic data 'poisoning the well' unless it is actually distributed as such. For training models with a minimal amount of quality data, it is a viable method for generating more data to increase the quality of the models. But any legit organization will obviously label synthetic data as such.

It's not an order of magnitude easier. It won't make a difference

ChatGPT will unlock new levels of both good and bad. The question is what the ratio between the two is going to be.

If you think about it, it will make 99% of ChatGPT answer technically INCORRECT.

It is harder to keep bad data out than it is to keep it filled with good data.

Reminds me of the “asymmetric bullshit principle”

Precisely.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law#:~:text=B....

which is the best kind of incorrect?

This is so worrying for me, the amount of digital garbage that can now be generated that is not obviously garbage, that one must read and discern first nonsensical bad text generation and second if factual, is truth becoming a needle in the hay stack? How can this be cleaned?

Are we pretending Faker hasn't been a staple library in software testing for years?

Are we pretending GPT isn’t a leagues better data-faker than Faker?

As always, it depends on your requirements.

GPT definitely wins out if you want more novelty/variety in your fake data and are willing to accept extraordinarily higher cost, less rigor, and less reliability. I'm sure there's some occasion when those criteria win out, but Faker's pretty decent most of the time.

Thankfully using GPT doesn’t preclude you from using Faker, so I think we can all agree this is strictly an improvement in one’s ability to fake data.

Sure, but what do you expect? It's like blaming Boeing for genocide and then trying to get rid of 747s.

There's plenty of research into AI safety. There were some damn coups going on over AI safety. The general public defines AI safety as Skynet and homemade bombs, but it's also things like this - political manipulation, astroturfing, fake data, the risk of another industrial revolution.

It's something we should be slamming the brakes on, but most of the people calling out AI safety are also building their own B52 bombers, so nobody takes them seriously either.

80000 Hours has been telling people to get into AI and nuclear policy for years now. Hopefully we have some competent people in govs who do something.

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