Engineering Aspects of LLM Bullshitting - Live Podcast

​Guest:

​Steven R Baker, Technology Advisor at AIFoundry.org

​Host:

​Greg Chase, Community Organizer at AIFoundry.org

​Harry Frankfurt’s 2005 book, On Bullshit, defines speech that is intended to persuade without consideration of the truth as “bullshit.”  Frankfurt, a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton, differentiates bullshit from lying in that liars care about hiding the truth. In contrast, bullshitters don’t care about whether their statements are true or false.

​Michael Townsen Hicks, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow, and his co-authors apply Frankfurt’s concepts to Generative AI, in their colorfully titled paper, “ChatGPT is Bullshit”.   The authors suggest that characterizing outputs of LLMS as bullshit, rather than hallucinations, more accurately reflects the nature of these systems and offers better guidance for public and policy understanding. Hicks et al. distinguish between "hard" and "soft" bullshit, where the former involves intentional deception about the nature of a topic, and the latter involves a mere indifference to truth. They argue that, at a minimum, LLMs produce soft bullshit and potentially hard bullshit if one considers the design and purpose behind their creation.

​Steven and I will discuss how open LLMs can help in understanding the nature of the bullshit an LLM may generate.  We will also explore why this may matter in different use cases and applications.  

​Note: this episode may be inappropriate for young children and those who dislike swear words.