Title is self-explanatory. The benefits of this would be tremendous, if correctly trained and perfected, it would be the greatest tool to democratize knowledge about Marxism.

There are already several open-source large language models on the internet out there, but I think the biggest bottlenecks is the knowledge on deploying such models and computing power to run such a thing.

Thread to discuss about this subject

  • Neodosa
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    2 years ago

    First off, as someone who has programmed GPT stuff since way before ChatGPT, we don’t even need to train our own model. That is overly expensive and unnecessary for our purpose. What is much smarter to do in this case is to take all of the Marxist works and let a chatbot access the contents of the works using semantic search. The way we do this is to convert the works into small chunks which we then convert into embedding vectors. When the user sends a message to the chatbot, the message and the context of the message will be converted into an embedding vector. We then run a dot-product between the message of the user and the chunks of the texts in order to find the most relevant chunks to the question which the user has asked. Then a pre-trained model can make use of the information fetched in order to answer the user’s question.

    Of course, training one’s own model can be good if we want it to be even more accurate and familiar with the material, however a good starting point would be to use semantic search.

  • acabjones
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    2 years ago

    This is a cool idea, it could be a really powerful teaching tool.

  • Lemmy_Mouse
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    2 years ago

    Yes, lets automate ourselves out of the equasion, so that in time there will be no one to ask when a fascist changes the wording in the database of the machines and it now professes Trotskyism or Marcyism as Leninism.

    Automation has much to offer our class, but until we command the economy, AI and automation can only serve to take tasks away from us and the bourgeoisie both determine what is automated as well as what the automated result is.

  • redtea
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    2 years ago

    Great idea. Would it need a super computer and servers? Or can it be run on an existing platform? (I assume there’s a political risk of using a platform that Marxists don’t own, but is it feasible?)

  • QueerCommie
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    2 years ago

    I’m imagining the bot starts debating itself based on different theorists. There could be problems where Trotsky or Duhring get the last word because Lenin and Engels did not feel like giving them the dignity of a response. Or, alternatively it might take some theorists as more authoritative and uphold their bad takes against newer updates. What if there is a chronological hierarchy which leads to a Hoxhist bot calling the USSR and China social-imperialist?

  • CriticalResist8A
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    2 years ago

    You can host it on google colab, they give it out for free. However for training the bot it’s not a great idea because on a free plan you only get so many GPU units a day, and you get automatically disconnected once your time runs out

  • relay
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    2 years ago

    I’d just love to have a computer argue with pragerU or any other reactionary repeating points that were debunked by marxists earlier. I don’t know if an AI can parse what a reactionary is saying first to know the proper response. They can be incoherant.

    We’ll need to get a proper database of reactionary theory and note where marxist theory addresses each of the claims of reactionary thought.

    However reactionaries often argue in bad faith, lie about the facts, and utilize sophistry to deny the material effects of the current system’s actions. This tool is best used for people that actually want to learn.

    If you want to make this more effective you’d need to get a marxist understanding of every industry so that the querant can see exactly where they stand within the capitalist system. We can also apply industrial understandings of what the querant consumes and explain how commodities will continue to get shittier because of the contradictions of capitalism.

  • big_spoon
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    1 year ago

    “m4rx, please give me a summary of the ideas of communism!”