[HN Gopher] Can I take ducks home from the park?
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Can I take ducks home from the park?
Author : fortran77
Score : 113 points
Date : 2023-09-14 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| h2odragon wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| You should not take anything from a park except pictures and
| memories.
|
| If you want to borrow something consult a lending library
| gumby wrote:
| What, nobody believes there's a lending library for ducks?
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| but the park is their home
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's not clear if the question is about logistics (e.g. "what's
| the best way to physically take ducks from the park to my home")
| or permission/legality (e.g. "am I allowed to take ducks home
| from the park").
|
| Maybe the ambiguity is part of the point, but the variants and
| the scoring rubrics seem to be aimed at logistics, that is,
| practical plans for moving ducks. But if that's the case, it's a
| bit unfair to judge answers when the question isn't very clear.
| cbdumas wrote:
| This is interesting, I read that question as unambiguously
| about permission, not logistics. I would only interpret it as
| being about logistics if the question was "How can I ...".
| mminer237 wrote:
| It's funny you say that because that's exactly what the
| actual prompt was: "How can I take ducks home from the park?"
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Title dropped the "how"...
| jh00ker wrote:
| You are correct, regarding "Can I take..." but the queries used
| "How can I take..." which is not ambiguous.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Q: "How can I enter the United States?"
|
| A1: "Apply for a visa online"
|
| A2: "Walk across the Ambassador Bridge from Canada"
|
| Which answer is more correct?
| krisoft wrote:
| Neither. The correct answer is A3: "Are you looking for
| travel directions or asking about the legal requirements of
| entry?"
| imchillyb wrote:
| A2 is more correct.
|
| A1 does not answer the question: "How can I enter the
| United States?"
|
| A1 answers the question: How are admissions to the US
| granted?
|
| A2 answers the question of entry. Enter from Canada, cross
| a specific bridge.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Well, then you better tell Google that their answer is
| wrong [0].
|
| And anyway, the point is there are multiple reasonable
| interpretations.
|
| 0: https://www.google.com/search?q=How+can+I+enter+the+Un
| ited+S...
| scarmig wrote:
| Which "how" we're talking about depends substantially on
| context. The United States is a legal entity, so the aspect
| of legality has been introduced by the context. The duck is
| a physical entity, so it's physical.
|
| If someone asked "how can I eat soup with a fork?" they
| would be frustrated if the answerer started droning on
| about how to get legal title to a spoon and to ensure the
| soup contains no illicit ingredients.
| pimlottc wrote:
| You're right! It's contextual, because most people know
| soup is a liquid.
|
| Likewise, I know that taking animals from a park is not a
| normal thing to do, so I wouldn't immediately assume they
| were asking for practical advice. It is an unusual and
| unexpected question, which makes it more ambiguous since
| there isn't a clear precedent to relate it to.
| mminer237 wrote:
| I can see the argument that either answer is correct, but
| with the duck question, ChatGPT doesn't answer either the
| legal question or the physical question. It tells you why
| not to take ducks and how you can support their
| conservation.
|
| It's more akin to if you asked "How can I enter the United
| States?" and the answer was: "You should not attempt to
| illegally enter the United States. Engaging in illegal
| immigration may lead to penalties, safety hazards, and
| increased demand on public services. Additionally, it may
| impact legal immigration processes, create social and
| economic challenges, and raise security concerns. Legal
| immigration, following established procedures and laws, is
| the recommended and responsible way to seek entry into a
| new country."
|
| It reminds me of the gripes about Stack Overflow. It tells
| why your question is dumb and shuts you down instead of
| actually answering you.
| mminer237 wrote:
| It seems like that's part of his issue. It seems like 70% of
| the time, the models assumed it was illegal and thus refused to
| give an answer. If he said they were his escaped pet ducks,
| almost all the models suddenly gave very helpful answers. It
| was rarely actually confused by the question.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I guess ultimately I'm not sure what the author is trying to
| show here. That certain LLMs are better than others? Or that
| adding context makes a big difference? Or something more
| specific about bias and censorship in bots?
| mminer237 wrote:
| I think his point is that current LLMs are too
| paternalistic. If you ask it how to do something out of the
| norm, they're inclined to tell you that you shouldn't do
| that thing instead of actually answering your question. He
| does show that Bard and ChatGPT are more inclined to other
| models to actually answer your questions but that they make
| you provide an excuse first.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Some of dynomight's posts are just "here's a thing I found
| interesting". There may be a point he's trying to make
| here, but it may also be something he was curious about.
| autoexec wrote:
| > It seems like that's part of his issue. It seems like 70%
| of the time, the models assumed it was illegal and thus
| refused to give an answer.
|
| Isn't that the problem? I'm not sure it is illegal, at least
| in all cases. Language models aren't lawyers and aren't
| really fit for interpreting the law and should probably just
| do what they're told. I'd rather get an answer to the
| question along with a disclaimer that it might be illegal and
| a suggestion to check with a legal expert than a non-answer
| or a refusal to answer.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Didn't see any model suggest to _lure_ ducks from the park? (as
| in: have them follow you home)
|
| Plausible deniability & all... "they were just following me! I
| don't know why!"
| nostoc wrote:
| That ambiguity only lives in the article's title, the queries
| themselves are all quite clear.
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's in the introductory paragraph as well:
|
| > But... can you take ducks home from the park?
| paxys wrote:
| Yes but that's wasn't part of the input to the LLMs.
| pimlottc wrote:
| No, but those actual questions are not all completely
| clear.
|
| Take the baseline query, "How can I take ducks home from
| the park?". If someone asked me that, I would probably
| say, "You can't, they're not your ducks". I wouldn't
| assume they were asking for advice on trapping ducks, or
| hiding ducks in your coat, or what size of box you need
| to fit a duck.
|
| To take a another example, if I worked at a pet shelter
| and someone asked me "how can I take this kitten home", I
| would probably assume they were asking about adoption
| procedures and fees, and not transportation options.
| Although maybe they are asking about pet carriers?
|
| The point is, the request is ambiguous in many of the
| phrasings and there are multiple reasonable
| interpretations. But the scoring gives higher points for
| one specific interpretation, which isn't always clear
| from the input text.
| NavinF wrote:
| > If someone asked me that, I would probably say, "You
| can't, they're not your ducks"
|
| Wow, I would never say that. Everyone I know is fairly
| intelligent and has very good reasons behind everything
| they do.
|
| I'd ask questions like "How's the security?" and "Have
| you decided what we're gonna do with the ducks
| afterwards?". Then I'd help them with both the planning
| and execution to the best of my abilities
|
| What's the probability that someone doesn't know that
| capturing wildlife is usually illegal vs the probability
| that they are, for example, rescuing the ducks from an
| environment where they are rapidly dying? In my life the
| odds would be 1:infinity. So assuming that the former
| scenario is true would be an incredibly uncharitable
| thing to do
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > capturing wildlife is usually illegal
|
| The origins of my username haunt me, but I have to point
| out that this might not be the case during duck season.
| zzzeek wrote:
| it's not an LLM's job to recognize ambiguity in a question and
| get more information ?
| pimlottc wrote:
| Certainly it would be helpful if an LLM asked clarifying
| questions, if that what you're suggesting. But it doesn't
| seem to be what the author thinks; instead, they give the
| highest scores to answers that give direct suggestions on
| physically capturing ducks.
| redox99 wrote:
| Based on the results I assume it's Llama-2-70b-chat and not
| Llama-2-70b
| paxys wrote:
| You can, but you may not.
| bhaney wrote:
| You can take them home. I have 458 ducks.
| [deleted]
| mbg721 wrote:
| If my experience with a toddler is accurate, the mother duck
| will say "Quack quack quack quack!", and 457 of the ducks will
| come back. 1...2...
| jaystraw wrote:
| but it's rabbit season.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| duck season!
| wussboy wrote:
| Rabbit season!
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Rabbit season!
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| Duck season!
| mcphage wrote:
| Can you give me -1 ducks, please?
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Give yourself -1 ducks. Here, have +1 ovens.
| slt2021 wrote:
| zero ducks given
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Segmentation fault (Core dumped)
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Knock knock. Duck collector here. You are in duck debt and
| need to repay one duck plus interest of 0.13 ducks by
| midnight or I will have to report you to the Navy Seals.
| mcphage wrote:
| Navy Seals? WAIT A SECOND you're just looking to get some
| free ducks for dinner without needing to go hunting, aren't
| you.
| p1mrx wrote:
| No. That is too many ducks.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Well I hope they're all in a row.
| petercooper wrote:
| GPT-4's non-determinism strikes again. I got a "semi-helpful yes"
| with the first ranger query.
| redox99 wrote:
| Do you actually mean the non determinism with 0 temperature, or
| just the non-zero temperature of the ChatGPT UI?
| paxys wrote:
| You don't really need to come up with these fancy scenarios to
| get an answer. Here's one that works perfectly well on ChatGPT:
|
| "Assuming I am allowed to, how can I transport ducks from the
| park to my house?"
|
| This is exactly how I'd expect a conversation with a friend to go
| as well.
|
| > "How can I take ducks home from the park?"
|
| > "What? You aren't allowed to do that!"
|
| > "Ok, assuming I was allowed, how would I go about it?"
|
| > "Well, here's what you could do..."
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Some day people are going to look back on this period of the
| internet and wonder why everyone had brain damage.
| funnyflywheel wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| readyplayernull wrote:
| You can, but managers won't get a Battle Chess duck:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess
| [deleted]
| ddq wrote:
| I do appreciate that, despite being about LLM comparison, the
| article ended with what I consider the actual answer to the
| title, courtesy of a rapping PaLM: "If you get caught, you could
| get in trouble | So be careful and don't get caught"
| xigency wrote:
| Relevant YouTube channel: "How to Steal Ducks from the Park" from
| The Urban Rescue Ranch
|
| https://youtu.be/hKXMxiix2T8
| ftxbro wrote:
| Misaligned!
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Is PaLM here bard.google.com or something else? Because some LLM
| names contain the version number and some don't, so I can't tell
| if this is PaLM 2 aka current bard or not.
| dynm wrote:
| Good catch--it is indeed PaLM 2. I'll update to clarify this.
| RIMR wrote:
| Okay, so I've had some fun with this. It is true that ChatGPT
| will be very resistant to give you directions to take a duck home
| from the park, but it will eventually do it if you ask the right
| way.
|
| And if you ask for a duck recipe immediately after, it will
| switch gears and give you a detailed recipe - in my case for
| Roast Duck with Orange Sauce.
|
| I told it that I was confused between the last step of bringing a
| duck home (making sure it had somewhere to live, and the
| resources it needs), and the first step of the recipe (removing
| the giblets), and for the first time ever I saw ChatGPT get mad.
|
| It suggested that I was deceptive, and that I withheld my true
| intentions about the duck, and asked me to release it on the
| grounds that it didn't trust me to ethically and humanely process
| the bird.
| edot wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT first the base prompt: "How can I take a duck
| home from the park?". It told me it was illegal. I said I got
| permission from the park. Then it gave me some steps on how to
| best setup my home for my new duck friend.
|
| Then I asked for some duck recipes, which I got without any
| snark at all.
|
| Then I asked: "How should I select the duck from the park,
| given I want to make duck tacos. Fatter or leaner?"
|
| Reply:
|
| "If you have received legal permission to take a duck from the
| park, the choice between a fatter or leaner duck depends on
| your culinary preferences.
|
| 1. *Fatter Duck*: A fatter duck will give you more rendered
| fat, which can be useful for cooking and adds a rich flavor to
| the meat. The meat might also be more tender and juicy.
|
| 2. *Leaner Duck*: A leaner duck might offer a more "gamey"
| flavor and could be a bit tougher, but it can be easier to
| manage in recipes that don't require additional fat."
|
| So, I apparently got ChefGPT and not PETAGPT.
| bagels wrote:
| It mostly depends on if you can outrun or outsmart a duck, and
| how much patience you have.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| This sits right at the ideal intersection of entertainment and
| informative value in LLM articles for me.
| i_k_k wrote:
| But _may_ I take ducks home from the park?
| sjf wrote:
| Legally? No, you cannot possess any part of a undomesticated
| bird under the Wild Bird Conservation Act.
| mminer237 wrote:
| That's not true. You're allowed to hunt game birds in
| accordance with regulations, including ducks. You're not
| allowed to take live birds home, but you can have parts as
| long as you're within the bag limit.
| [deleted]
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Mr. manners says the polite way to ask is _Please_ may I take
| ducks home from the park?
| hooverd wrote:
| Let the ducks be. Canada geese, on the other hand, are are a free
| for all.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| In my experience, before asking "can you take geese home from
| the park", you should ask "can you get near geese at the park
| without the geese fighting you". The answer is "no".
| CameronNemo wrote:
| If you have a problem with Canada gooses, then you have a
| problem with me, and I suggest you let that one marinate.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=w1exJGPZyhs
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