If they were torturing an actual organic living being ( plant and/or animal ) or something like a doll or stuffed animal, I would be so much more concerned. “Torturing” ( a term in which I believe should only ever be applied to organic living beings and not inorganic “lifeforms” ) a genAI model holds like zero weight because that’s not ever going to be a sentient being and therefore all it is is simulations of emotion.
The people saying it’s cruel need serious therapy for their delusions, IMO.
its not ‘cruel’ but its still red flag. Like your mentioned doll or stuffed animal. Why are those much more concerning? They dont plead for mercy from their torturer like an llm does even though they are equally real.
IMO having the urge to torture anything is a huuuuge red flag
There’s a virtue ethics argument to be made for not doing this. It’s not bad for the LLM (because it’s not sentient, nothing can be bad-for-it), but it’s perhaps bad for the experimenter. The main argument for doing it is out of spite for the promptfondlers.
I personally see dolls and stuffed aninals nore concerning as they, at least for the majority of stuffed animals I have, are more anthro/bear on 2 legs kinda human like kind. And I can easily see how people are more able to look at that and envision a person they don’t like or wronged them somehow and then kinda escalate from there. Moreso than text on a screen due to it not having a physical form that has even somewhat of a human like form. I can easily see because I have done something similar in the past with stuffed animals. Thankfully, I never acted on those thoughts and haven’t had any in maybe a little over a decade.
Though, I totally understand the whole torture anything urge red flag thing. It’s absolutely a red flag for me, but to a slightly lower degree for torturing clankers.
Eh, I could see an argument for there being a similarity between setting up computer systems specifically for generating lots of pain-text automatically, and writing lots of torture stories (in what it reveals about the person doing it or what habits of thought repeatedly doing it instills) if it’s for the aesthetics of the text rather than interest in the shape of human language as revealed by theory-free inference.
If they were torturing an actual organic living being ( plant and/or animal ) or something like a doll or stuffed animal, I would be so much more concerned. “Torturing” ( a term in which I believe should only ever be applied to organic living beings and not inorganic “lifeforms” ) a genAI model holds like zero weight because that’s not ever going to be a sentient being and therefore all it is is simulations of emotion.
The people saying it’s cruel need serious therapy for their delusions, IMO.
its not ‘cruel’ but its still red flag. Like your mentioned doll or stuffed animal. Why are those much more concerning? They dont plead for mercy from their torturer like an llm does even though they are equally real.
IMO having the urge to torture anything is a huuuuge red flag
There’s a virtue ethics argument to be made for not doing this. It’s not bad for the LLM (because it’s not sentient, nothing can be bad-for-it), but it’s perhaps bad for the experimenter. The main argument for doing it is out of spite for the promptfondlers.
I personally see dolls and stuffed aninals nore concerning as they, at least for the majority of stuffed animals I have, are more anthro/bear on 2 legs kinda human like kind. And I can easily see how people are more able to look at that and envision a person they don’t like or wronged them somehow and then kinda escalate from there. Moreso than text on a screen due to it not having a physical form that has even somewhat of a human like form. I can easily see because I have done something similar in the past with stuffed animals. Thankfully, I never acted on those thoughts and haven’t had any in maybe a little over a decade.
Though, I totally understand the whole torture anything urge red flag thing. It’s absolutely a red flag for me, but to a slightly lower degree for torturing clankers.
Eh, I could see an argument for there being a similarity between setting up computer systems specifically for generating lots of pain-text automatically, and writing lots of torture stories (in what it reveals about the person doing it or what habits of thought repeatedly doing it instills) if it’s for the aesthetics of the text rather than interest in the shape of human language as revealed by theory-free inference.