I stopped at the daft-to-me premise:

> As large language models (LLMs) are adopted into frameworks that grant them the capacity to make real decisions, it is increasingly important to ensure that they are unbiased

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shermantanktop 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the paper is about bias formation, not reflecting existing bias.

If the formed bias was against HN usernames that started with “r,” would it still seem daft?

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riazrizvi 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There is no position lacking bias. The question of bias against me is a political position not an epistemological problem that can be eliminated. I see authors that are unaware of things like context and relativity.

When ppl say there is an absolute truth that we need to stick to, they are slipping in a totalitarian political position and calling it truth. It runs against the whole premise of nature and life, which has rested for 4 billion years on: Alternative competing positions, seeing which one works best.

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shermantanktop an hour ago | parent [-]

There is such a thing as lack of bias in statistical outcomes, right? E.g. fair dice? Measuring it may be probabilistic, but it exists.

What I'd like to see is if the LLM would exhibit the same behavior wrt other types of predictive selections. For example, rather than choosing people from four tribes, choosing flower seeds from four packets, or choosing lottery tickets from four machines.

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riazrizvi 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

No. It's a shorthand for contextual bias. The context is the tiny window of the statistic. When it's applied to a real world situation, ppl promote the 'unbiasedness' into a real situation that isn't constrained by it.

Bias cannot be avoided in any information, because it's always a position of what is relevant and in what presented order. The only unbiased thing is nature itself in its immediate instantaneous totality.

	▲	shermantanktop 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Are you sure? I mean, yes of course tiny sample windows have this effect. But it seems at least possible that LLM is more prone to this effect when making estimates of human performance or behavior than when doing it for other topics. In any case I feel the paper is interesting but almost begging to be misinterpreted.

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AnimalMuppet 27 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It's daft to me that anyone would do it. But I strongly suspect that someone will, and more than one someone.