[boerseth]

It used to be that every time I heard about some problem with training AI systems, I would be struck by how much the challenges line up and parallel the challenges involved in raising human children, and how humans learn more generally.

However, researchers are able to say and find out a lot more about the way LLMs work and learn than they can about human brains. It might be to take the metaphor too far, but I sometimes like to think about how and whether at all these sorts of findings about AIs can apply in any way to us.

This particular case makes me wonder if there is anything to the human instinct to dismiss and ignore people entirely once you learn they're not morally aligned with you on some core issue. In particular we might ignore entertainers and content creators that have views we strongly disagree with, even if they're well reviewed and highly popular, and even if they seem to stay off those sensitive topics in a specific episode/movie/podcast/stand-up-special. We don't want to risk subliminally learning their corrupted values.

Edit: Not to say it is wise to "cancel" and ignore people you don't agree with. Frankly I think it is bad if you value discourse and keeping your mind open to new and differing opinions. Rather, I'm arguing here that it makes sense that this instinct of ours came about at all as we evolved, since it is probably beneficial to stick to your values.