relevant-ish
“As ML is still a (relatively) recent field of study, especially outside the realm of abstract mathematics, few works have been conducted on the political aspect of LLMs, and more particularly about the alignment process and its political dimension. This process can be as simple as prompt engineering but is also very complex and can affect completely unrelated questions. For example, politically directed alignment has a very strong impact on an LLM’s embedding space and the relative position of political notions in such a space. Using special tools to evaluate general political bias and analyze the effects of alignment, we can gather new data to understand its causes and possible consequences on society. Indeed, by taking a socio-political approach, we can hypothesize that most big LLMs are aligned with what Marxist philosophy calls the ’dominant ideology.’ As AI’s role in political decision-making—at the citizen’s scale but also in government agencies—such biases can have huge effects on societal change, either by creating new and insidious pathways for societal uniformity or by allowing disguised extremist views to gain traction among the people.”
Congratulations on discovering the morose whining of Morrissey. He’s a run-of-the-mill self-important right wing douchebag. But as someone who has been listening to the same songs for 30 years (including lots of Morrissey), i went almost my whole life having no info on who the guy is as a person, which is true of all the musicians and other popular artists whose work i consume. i’ve just never really been interested in that stuff.
then as i was spending more time in online leftist spaces, i started finding myself under attack for mentioning my enjoyment of particular songs or movies due to an artist’s demonstrated lack of character and/or crap right wing political beliefs. these artists’ stated beliefs/actions are not good and they do matter, and while thoughtful discussions around “death of the artist” and what not are warranted (and desperately needed), that is not what’s happening most of the time. what i see is pretty much just replication of neoliberal individualism.
People compete for social status by calling out others as a means of establishing their ideological superiority. it severely undermines solidarity and only serves to reward those neoliberal individualist tendencies that we really need to be focused on unlearning - and that can only happen when we embrace nuance and acknowledge that this is a complex issue, people are complex, art is complex, and so is the social context that shapes our character, values, and principles. for example, how many of us have taken into consideration the ways consumerism has shaped our understanding of what it means to be “political?”
that’s just my .02 cents or .72 cents or whatever lol