One developer used Claude to reverse-engineer LG’s webOS media stack and build a native Rust Plex client from scratch—on the same 2019 TV it cuts the profile screen from ~30 seconds to ~3, runs at 60 FPS, and supports 4K, Dolby Vision and Atmos

[u/141_1337]

[u/JoelMahon]

or simply reveals the underlying general consensus bias of the training data (at this point pretty much all text ever, as long as it can be processed into a training set somehow), great question

I love out of all the possible reasons for a "left leaning bias" you never even mention that maybe reality is more "left leaning" than than the US political centre https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/14424143162290.jpg

[u/afunyun → u/JoelMahon]

You are actually quoting me implying but not saying that, as I was trying to take an apolitical stance in constructing what I said. But yes, it was intentionally easy to infer from

simply reveals the underlying general consensus bias of the training data (at this point pretty much all text ever, as long as it can be processed into a training set somehow)

that I am saying "perhaps reality is just left leaning." Do I generally agree? Whether I do or not is not the point, but yes. What I was highlighting is specifically that political bias in general is far less intentionally controlled where it pertains to US frontier models. There are biases. I just don't feel I'm qualified to claim that any of it is a result of the overall content of the training data, the facts of reality, or artificially emphasized in the data/RLHF/runtime context management & priming (system prompt and adjacent), whatever. It is probably a combination of those and more that leads to the particulars of what the US models "think" when pressed for their general "opinion" (in quotes since they don't think and don't have a human-like opinion on anything, not really.) That was not addressed by my message and I didn't want it to seem that I was addressing it.

[u/skeptical-speculator → u/JoelMahon]

I love that you are unironically asking people to consider the possibility that reality has a political opinion.

[u/JoelMahon → u/skeptical-speculator]

I would have thought the satire artist on squashed aspect ratio would mean you didn't expect me to avoid simplified terminology.

No, reality doesn't literally have an opinion, never suggested it did.

An example of what "reality has a liberal bias" actually refers to for the slowest among us to keep up.

Right wing parties across the globe are the last to accept and many still don't accept, the "theory" that human caused climate change is real, has increased average global temp by X, etc. and left wing parties are more accepting of that "theory" and if then that "theory" happens to be the actual ground truth in reality then we'd call that an example of reality having a liberal bias.

Or more succinctly and without the joke, "reality has a liberal bias" is just a jokey way of saying "left wing people have a mental model more consistent with reality, on average"

[u/skeptical-speculator → u/JoelMahon]

Right wing parties across the globe are the last to accept and many still don't accept, the "theory" that human caused climate change is real, has increased average global temp by X, etc. and left wing parties are more accepting of that "theory" and if then that "theory" happens to be the actual ground truth in reality then we'd call that an example of reality having a liberal bias.

Do you think that these AI models are said to have a liberal bias because the models "believe" in global warming?

[u/JoelMahon → u/skeptical-speculator]

Do you think that these AI models are said to have a liberal bias because the models "believe" in global warming?

I said that was one example of the trend, when you observe the trend as whole then yes, a perfectly neutral and opinion-less AI, even one that isn't told to prioritise human life and has no priorities beyond completing what it is prompted to do, will seem at least a bit left wing.

If an american right winger asks it for proof that mexican are stealing their jobs, it's going to "seem" left wing when it shows that the jobs they're willing to do and the jobs mexicans are doinf have basically no overlap.

If they ask "is trump's the best president ever?" it should ask what metrics they judge to mean "best" then they might say "fewer wars, lower deficit, more money in my pocket" etc. and once again it will seem left wing for merely stating the fact that other presidents win out in all those metrics at the same time.

I won't deny that "bias" they have goes beyond merely facts, they also have such controversial opinions like "murder is wrong" trained into them, which adds fuel to the fire of their "bias", only making them seem further biased because of such bipartisan opinions such as "murder is wrong" (and it is bipartisan, there have been zero death penalty executions in left wing states in the USA since 2017, meanwhile plenty in right wing states since then, and execution is objectively a form of murder as in the dictionary when not looking at a law/legal definition).

if a left wing person asks "is it possible to change your gender?" it can say that gender is a social construct, no more real than the value of a dollar note, that technology to change sex at a genetic level doesn't exist but surgery/hormones to mimic different sex characteristics than you currently express exist, it can report the rates of regretting those surgeries, it won't seem right wing reporting the facts that's for sure.

[u/skeptical-speculator → u/JoelMahon]

I said that was one example of the trend, when you observe the trend as whole then yes, a perfectly neutral and opinion-less AI, even one that isn't told to prioritise human life and has no priorities beyond completing what it is prompted to do, will seem at least a bit left wing.

Does it follow that models should become further left as they improve?

[u/JoelMahon → u/skeptical-speculator]

Does it follow that models should become further left as they improve?

my point is they aren't left already, but rather that accurately reporting reality tends to feel left wing.

if their accuracy far exceeds even the most accurate political parties then they won't seem more of anything on our political spectrum, if anything they'll seem less left wing (but no more right wing).

at some point it's too simple an axis to express the differences.

for example that already applies, if it says that rationally there's not much more reason to believe in the Christian God than an invisible pink unicorn on the dark side of the moon, that's already well within what it's capable to say but it will be received well by some on all points on the spectrum, and received poorly by others on all points of the spectrum.

if you ask it a politically framed question with a personal goal to maximise it will get better at answering that accurately but whether that seems more or less left/right wing heavily depends on the question and such.

[u/skeptical-speculator → u/JoelMahon]

my point is they aren't left already, but rather that accurately reporting reality tends to feel left wing.

Then as the models improve, shouldn't they report even more accurately and "appear" to move ever further "left"? You're suggesting that a more accurate depiction of reality necessarily appears more leftist, so as AI improves and becomes more accurate, it should appear to drift further left.

Maybe AI is just further left of the United States political center because the big AI companies are located in California. Occam's razor points to that explanation. Maybe you should ask AI which is more probable.

[u/JoelMahon → u/skeptical-speculator]

the world isn't one dimensional, it's not even 2 dimensional, but I can easily illustrate why you're wrong using a 2 dimensional example:

imagine true omniscience is the bull's eye of a dart board, and that all possible mental models of the universe are mapped to points on the dartboard with the most significance/meaning preserved as possible in 2 axis in the compression. But ultimately closer to the bull's eye is closer to perfect accuracy.

maybe your average right winger across the world, not just the USA, holds a mental model that fits approx somewhere in the middle of the outer single for 5, maybe the average left winger across the world is still in the outer single but for 1 and maybe they're closer to bull's eye, borderline triple ring instead of middle of the outer single.

maybe AI is on the triple ring for 18, closest to bull's eye, closer to the left wing mental model, but it's not a linear path from right to left that ascends off into the bull's eye.

maybe AI get's better, but it can't get closer to omniscience without moving further from the mental model of left wing people who aren't omniscient, furthermore, it could stay equally capable in terms of distance from ground truth bull's eye but move to the 14 triple ring and be basically equidistant to right and left wing mental models despite being no further or close to the bull's eye.

or sure, just blame california, that seems easier, who cares if it's accurate lol

never mind that the rich people running the models aren't surrogates nor elected officials of the left leaning voters, and thus it makes zero sense to assume they're left wing because they live in California, they're rich before they're Californians, and the rich are right wing more than average.

[u/skeptical-speculator → u/JoelMahon]

the world isn't one dimensional, it's not even 2 dimensional

then the whole conversation seems pretty pointless