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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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How plausible sentence generators are changing the bullshit wars

This Friday (September 8) at 10hPT/17hUK, I'm livestreaming "How To Dismantle the Internet" with Intelligence Squared.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit":

https://locusmag.com/2023/09/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-plausible-sentence-generators/

Here's what happened: I got stranded at JFK due to heavy weather and an air-traffic control tower fire that locked down every westbound flight on the east coast. The American Airlines agent told me to try going standby the next morning, and advised that if I booked a hotel and saved my taxi receipts, I would get reimbursed when I got home to LA.

But when I got home, the airline's reps told me they would absolutely not reimburse me, that this was their policy, and they didn't care that their representative had promised they'd make me whole. This was so frustrating that I decided to take the airline to small claims court: I'm no lawyer, but I know that a contract takes place when an offer is made and accepted, and so I had a contract, and AA was violating it, and stiffing me for over $400.

The problem was that I didn't know anything about filing a small claim. I've been ripped off by lots of large American businesses, but none had pissed me off enough to sue – until American broke its contract with me.

So I googled it. I found a website that gave step-by-step instructions, starting with sending a "final demand" letter to the airline's business office. They offered to help me write the letter, and so I clicked and I typed and I wrote a pretty stern legal letter.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a campaigning law-firm for over 20 years, and I've spent the same amount of time writing about the sins of the rich and powerful. I've seen a lot of threats, both those received by our clients and sent to me.

I've been threatened by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ralph Lauren to the Sacklers. I've been threatened by lawyers representing the billionaire who owned NSOG roup, the notoroious cyber arms-dealer. I even got a series of vicious, baseless threats from lawyers representing LAX's private terminal.

So I know a thing or two about writing a legal threat! I gave it a good effort and then submitted the form, and got a message asking me to wait for a minute or two. A couple minutes later, the form returned a new version of my letter, expanded and augmented. Now, my letter was a little scary – but this version was bowel-looseningly terrifying.

I had unwittingly used a chatbot. The website had fed my letter to a Large Language Model, likely ChatGPT, with a prompt like, "Make this into an aggressive, bullying legal threat." The chatbot obliged.

I don't think much of LLMs. After you get past the initial party trick of getting something like, "instructions for removing a grilled-cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible," the novelty wears thin:

https://www.emergentmind.com/posts/write-a-biblical-verse-in-the-style-of-the-king-james

Yes, science fiction magazines are inundated with LLM-written short stories, but the problem there isn't merely the overwhelming quantity of machine-generated stories – it's also that they suck. They're bad stories:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

LLMs generate naturalistic prose. This is an impressive technical feat, and the details are genuinely fascinating. This series by Ben Levinstein is a must-read peek under the hood:

https://benlevinstein.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-large-language

But "naturalistic prose" isn't necessarily good prose. A lot of naturalistic language is awful. In particular, legal documents are fucking terrible. Lawyers affect a stilted, stylized language that is both officious and obfuscated.

The LLM I accidentally used to rewrite my legal threat transmuted my own prose into something that reads like it was written by a $600/hour paralegal working for a $1500/hour partner at a white-show law-firm. As such, it sends a signal: "The person who commissioned this letter is so angry at you that they are willing to spend $600 to get you to cough up the $400 you owe them. Moreover, they are so well-resourced that they can afford to pursue this claim beyond any rational economic basis."

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

Here's the thing: the fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit":

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit

LLMs may not be good at generating science fiction short stories, but they're excellent at generating bullshit. For example, a university prof friend of mine admits that they and all their colleagues are now writing grad student recommendation letters by feeding a few bullet points to an LLM, which inflates them with bullshit, adding puffery to swell those bullet points into lengthy paragraphs.

Naturally, the next stage is that profs on the receiving end of these recommendation letters will ask another LLM to summarize them by reducing them to a few bullet points. This is next-level bullshit: a few easily-grasped points are turned into a florid sheet of nonsense, which is then reconverted into a few bullet-points again, though these may only be tangentially related to the original.

What comes next? The reference letter becomes a useless signal. It goes from being a thing that a prof has to really believe in you to produce, whose mere existence is thus significant, to a thing that can be produced with the click of a button, and then it signifies nothing.

We've been through this before. It used to be that sending a letter to your legislative representative meant a lot. Then, automated internet forms produced by activists like me made it far easier to send those letters and lawmakers stopped taking them so seriously. So we created automatic dialers to let you phone your lawmakers, this being another once-powerful signal. Lowering the cost of making the phone call inevitably made the phone call mean less.

Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.

Chatbots are the nuclear weapons of the bullshit wars. Want to generate 2,000 words of nonsense about "the first time I ate an egg," to run overtop of an omelet recipe you're hoping to make the number one Google result? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate fake complaints or fake positive reviews? The Stochastic Parrot will produce 'em all day long.

As I wrote for Locus: "None of this prose is good, none of it is really socially useful, but there’s demand for it. Ironically, the more bullshit there is, the more bullshit filters there are, and this requires still more bullshit to overcome it."

Meanwhile, AA still hasn't answered my letter, and to be honest, I'm so sick of bullshit I can't be bothered to sue them anymore. I suppose that's what they were counting on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/#robolawyers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #chatbots #plausible sentence generators #robot lawyers #robolawyers #ai #ml #machine learning #artificial intelligence #stochastic parrots #bullshit #bullshit generators #the bullshit wars #llms #large language models #writing #Ben Levinstein

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fotografobcn · 5 years ago

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La colección de fotografía Gilman y González-Falla llega a España

Lewis Hine, On the Hoist, Empire State Building, 1931 Libre de derechos

La Fundación Foto Colectania, gracias a la colaboración de la Fundación Banco Sabadell, inaugurará el próximo 20 de junio la exposición La belleza de las líneas. Fotografía de la colección Gilman y González-Falla. La exposición está producida por el Musée de l’Elysée de Lausana, y comisariada por Pauline Martin, conservadora, y Tatyana Franck, directora del Musée de l’Elysée.

La muestra presenta una excepcional selección de obras maestras de la historia de la fotografía de la colección de Sondra Gilman y Celso González-Falla. Esta colección, con sede en Nueva York, atesora más de 1500 fotografías originales de algunos de los mejores fotógrafos del siglo XX y XXI como Robert Adams, Walker Evans, Rineke Dijkstra, Man Ray, Berenice Abbott o Lee Friedlander, entre muchos otros.

Sobre la exposición

A lo largo de la historia, los fotógrafos siempre han oscilado entre dos extremos: la ilusión mimética de la realidad y el realce de las cualidades estéticas de la imagen. Ya sean «líneas instantáneas” (según la expresión de Henri Cartier-Bresson), líneas racionales inspiradas en la corriente del New Topographics, o la diversidad de líneas curvas del cuerpo humano, en fotografía, la línea estructura y, a veces, reinventa lo real, hasta el punto de llegar a la abstracción.

A través de distintas confrontaciones visuales, esta exposición invita al espectador a experimentar el poder de la línea fotográfica a través de 120 fotografías.

La muestra se divide en tres secciones. En Líneas rectas se agrupan obras de autores que enfatizan las líneas de fuerza de la imagen, ya sean rígidas o espontáneas. En esta sección se encuentran las fachadas abigarradas y coloristas de Stéphane Couturier, los paisajes retrofuturistas de Hiroshi Sugimoto, los urbanismos solitarios de Lewis Balz o los campos desolados de Robert Adams.

En Líneas curvas se muestra cómo la curva define los cuerpos masculinos y femeninos, fotografiados en su totalidad o en detalle, a través de las imágenes de naturalezas inquietantes de Edward Weston, la sensualidad de Bill Brandt y Robert Mapplethorpe, los retratos callejeros de André Kertész y Léon Levinstein o la modernidad de Berenice Abbott, entre otros.

Por último, Abstracciones abarca fotografías cuya referencia al mundo real desaparece revelando las líneas de abstracción de la imagen, ahí están las superficies rugosas de Aaron Siskind, los paisajes abstractos de Minor White, las luces y sombras de Ray K. Metzker o las formas sinuosas de Harry Callahan.

La colección Gilman y González-Falla

Todo empezó en los años 70, cuando Sondra Gilman descubrió el trabajo del fotógrafo francés Eugène Atget y compró sus tres primeras fotografías. Desde entonces, el matrimonio Gilman – González-Falla ha ido adquiriendo obra movido por un objetivo: “Lo que buscamos en una imagen es sencillo: debe emocionarnos”.

En 2014 el matrimonio donó 75 imágenes clásicas de la fotografía americana del s. XX al Whitney Museum de Nueva York. En 2018 su colección viajó a Europa por primera vez al Musée de l’Elysée de Lausana, y ahora, también por primera vez, lo hace a nuestro país.

La colección de Sondra Gilman y Celso González-Falla revela el placer de los coleccionistas que adquieren sus fotografías sobre todo por preferencia personal, manteniendo una relación cotidiana y privada con las imágenes. Más allá de este vínculo privado, la exposición invita al visitante a realizar un viaje estético: las confrontaciones formales se liberan de su contexto cultural e histórico para permitir que el espectador experimente su propia relación personal y sensible con la imagen fotográfica.

Lista de autores participantes:

ABBOTT Berenice (1898-1991), ADAMS Ansel Easton (1902-1984), ADAMS Robert (1937), BADESSI Laurent Elie (1964), BALTZ Lewis (1945-2014), BING Ilse (1899-1998), BLACKMON Julie (1966), BLOSSFELDT Karl (1865-1932), BOURKE-WHITE Margaret (1904-1971), BRANDT Bill (1904-1983), BULLOCK Wynn (1902-1975), BURTYNSKY Ed (1955), CALLAHAN Harry (1912-1999), CANTAMESSA Augusto (1927), CARTIER-BRESSON Henri (1908-2004), CLARK Larry (1943), COLLINS Ken (1948), COUTURIER Stéphane (1957), CUNNINGHAM Imogen (1883-1976), DAVIDSON Bruce (1933), DIJKSTRA Rineke (1959), DOISNEAU Robert (1912-1994), DRTIKOL František (1883-1961), EGGLESTON William (1939), EVANS Walker (1903-1975), FARRI Stanislao (1924), FRANK Robert (1924), FRIEDLANDER Lee (1934), GARNETT William (1916-2006), GIBSON Ralph (1939), GOLDIN Nan (1953), HARVEY Cig (1973), HELG Béatrice (1956), HILLIARD David (1964), HINE Lewis (1874-1940), HÖFER Candida (1944), ISHIMOTO Yasuhiro (1921-2012), ITURBIDE Graciela (1942), KASTEN Barbara (1936), KEETMAN Peter (1916-2005), KENNA Michael (1953), KERTÉSZ André (1894-1985), KLETT Mark (1952), KOUDELKA Josef (1938), LEVINSTEIN Leon (1910-1988), LEVITT Helen (1913-2009), LUX Loretta (1969), MAN RAY (1890-1976), MANN Sally (1951), MAPPLETHORPE Robert (1946-1989), METZKER Ray. K (1931-2014), MODEL Lisette (1901-1983), MORELL Abelardo (1948), MUNIZ Vik (1961), NAGUIT Ramon (atribuido a), OUTERBRIDGE Paul (1896-1958), PÉREZ BRAVO Marta Maria (1959), PLACHY Sylvia (1943), RENGER-PATZSCH Albert (1897-1966), RIBOUD Marc (1923-2016), RODCHENKO Alexander (1891-1956), ROSSITER Alison (1953), SERRANO Andres (1950), SHAHN Ben (1898-1969), SISKIND Aaron (1903-1991), SOTH Alec (1969), STEICHEN Edward (1879-1973), STETTNER Louis (1922), STRAND Paul (1890-1976), STRUTH Thomas (1954), SUDEK Josef (1896-1976), SUGIMOTO Hiroshi (1948), THORNE-THOMSEN Ruth (1943), WEBB Todd (1905-2000), WESTON Edward (1886-1958), WHITE Minor (1908-1976).

La belleza de las líneas. Fotografía de la Colección Gilman y González-Falla

Del 20 de junio al 29 de septiembre de 2019

Fundación Foto Colectania Passeig Picasso 14 08003 Barcelona www.fotocolectania.org

Horarios

De martes a sábado de 11h a 20h; y domingos de 11h a 15h.

Entrada: 4 € (Reducida: 3 €. 1er domingo de mes, entrada gratuita)

El post La colección de fotografía Gilman y González-Falla llega a España fue publicado por primera vez en DNG Photo Magazine.

http://bit.ly/2I03Qp1 via Fotografo Barcelona

#IFTTT #DNG Photo Magazine

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