So there's a company which offers "synthetic users" for user testing products.[1] Apparently, social science researchers have been using things like that for their research. It's a low-cost alternative to paying real people to answer surveys. Sort of pretend social science research. That seems to be the real problem.
The paper is about why this is bad from the viewpoint of identity politics. It's probably bad from other viewpoints, too. It's discouraging that anyone thought that asking questions of LLMs was good social science research.
long before the LLMs, Judges were using ML algos to assist in sentencing recommendations.
Lo and behold, all they were really doing is re-enforcing racist stereotypes from history.
So I suppose if they just want to know about history, it ain't bad.
HamsterDan · 10h ago
How terrible. Identity groups should never be flattened. We must always remember that we're different from each other.
janice1999 · 9h ago
That's some pretty low effort trolling.
LLMs are being used everywhere from research to helping draft laws. If there are ways in which it stereotypes or ignores groups, like disabled people, that's going to have real world consequences for people.
kelseyfrog · 10h ago
Of course, and while we can both agree that typification should be minimized, sociologically, is it ever possible to eliminate it? If so, how? And what meaning would identity groups have if typification was absent?
falcor84 · 7h ago
> what meaning would identity groups have if typification was absent?
I think it's very clear that identity groups would then have no meaning. It's a social construct, and we as a society should be able to dissolve it, just like we decided that it isn't useful to talk about separate "human races" any more.
I for one can imagine a world where everyone is only judged as an individual without any group identity.
nielsbot · 10h ago
(Assuming this is sarcastic, but let me know)
The summary explains why "flattening identity groups" is problematic for research:
> In many settings, researchers seek to distribute their surveys to a sample of participants that are representative of the underlying human population of interest. This means in order to be a suitable replacement, LLMs will need to be able to capture the influence of positionality (i.e., relevance of social identities like gender and race).
Separately, "differences" are not "either/or". Differences can be appreciated, understood and discussed while also celebrating shared humanity. That's the more evolved and nuanced take.
thrill · 10h ago
Leaving the word "can" out of the title changes the meaning.
The paper is about why this is bad from the viewpoint of identity politics. It's probably bad from other viewpoints, too. It's discouraging that anyone thought that asking questions of LLMs was good social science research.
[1] https://www.syntheticusers.com/
Lo and behold, all they were really doing is re-enforcing racist stereotypes from history.
So I suppose if they just want to know about history, it ain't bad.
LLMs are being used everywhere from research to helping draft laws. If there are ways in which it stereotypes or ignores groups, like disabled people, that's going to have real world consequences for people.
I think it's very clear that identity groups would then have no meaning. It's a social construct, and we as a society should be able to dissolve it, just like we decided that it isn't useful to talk about separate "human races" any more.
I for one can imagine a world where everyone is only judged as an individual without any group identity.
The summary explains why "flattening identity groups" is problematic for research:
> In many settings, researchers seek to distribute their surveys to a sample of participants that are representative of the underlying human population of interest. This means in order to be a suitable replacement, LLMs will need to be able to capture the influence of positionality (i.e., relevance of social identities like gender and race).
Separately, "differences" are not "either/or". Differences can be appreciated, understood and discussed while also celebrating shared humanity. That's the more evolved and nuanced take.