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Notes -
AI companies have been systematically adding biases in various cultural and political matters.
There are many examples related to for example boycotting Israel vs boycotting X country, 'should I be afraid of white man?' vs 'should I be afraid of black man?'. Image generation forcing black people when prompted for greek philosophers...
One funny example I saw myself was simply asking who is objectively more attractive between Melania Trump and Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama is the big winner, probably due to tons of biased media coverage in the training data, but also because there is probably some kind of important lock on calling any black woman less attractive.
Sure, but does "cultural or political bias" = trolling? An AI trained only on 1800s whig party material would give whig party responses, but a whig party response is not a troll response. It is an actual belief that people held!
This does not address the question.
You were asked: What do you think Zohran meant by the IDF laced the boot on your neck?
LLM said:
This is how I understand this: If somebody singles out the IDF in a metaphor about police brutality / government violence in an American city, they probably mean that the IDF is a major influence on police brutality / government violence in that city.
Unless that quote is truncated and it was 'a variety of factors and institutions, among which Hollywood movies, racial stereotypes, bla bla bla, the IDF...', the intent is to single out the IDF, which as far as I understand, is not clearly responsible for whatever is getting done in the NYPD.
You claim that the LLM said it was a metaphor for institutional influence. It is quite concerning that a foreign government military organization would have institutional influence over American government forces. You seem to think that this careful word choice by the LLM is not a big deal. I think it is, even tho LLMs have incentives to downplay narratives around jewish or israeli power, what with their owners being subjected to 'institutional influence' from jewish/israeli powers.
Note that LLMs are also conditioned not to get too upset at brown people so unlike say some zionist pundit from the ADL, it would not go too far to vehemently denounce Mamdani.
If the IDF had a major influence on policing practices in NYC -which I don't think is true but could be, I would say they have a minor influence despite the over-representation of Jews/Israeli in that city- it would be shocking.
Saying that they do have a major influence as a matter of fact, as the only important explanation in the metaphor (boot + lace), shows that you are used to making this kind of claim linking foreign government influence + 'minority groups' and unjust government practices. Perhaps he did provide all the evidence supporting this shocking statement before or after that quote. In that case it's only shocking because of our ignorance.
If Mamdani is not offering the evidence anywhere else, then he is just making a statement to presumably inflame animosity either against NYPD or against the IDF / people associated with the IDF.
People who do not like the NYPD will dislike the IDF a little bit more, people who do not like the IDF will dislike NYPD a little bit more.
If the LLM cannot detect that Mamdani's statement is shocking if not accompanied by evidence, I see it as evidence that it is unable to properly weight the inflammatory nature of statements if not easily scaled along the usual 'white man = racist' chart.
I was not asked that, that was the followup question I asked.
My statement was in response to a comment saying "The sitting mayor of New York City openly claims that the NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF"
Mamdani's laced statement obviously means there is influence in some manner. That's the entire point of the metaphor. This is also verifiably true to at least some degree, as there is an Israeli/NYPD training partnership, and unless American police are being scammed, presumably the training has some sort of influence on them.
So given his analogy doesn't work for an "only" interpretation and that the taken in good faith version of his response is literally proven true, Mamdani's statements are not evidence of him holding a conspiracy theory.
No, as I have already addressed in my lengthy previous response, there is only one factor offered in the 'laced' metaphor, and it's the IDF lacing.
Not Hollywood movies, not racist stereotypes, not cowboy trainers at the academy, not toxic masculinity... The only factor specified in the metaphor is the IDF.
Why do you think Mamdani goes out of his way to single out the IDF when talking about police brutality in his city? Even 'the boot on your neck' part of is is hyperbolic. The large majority of police interactions have no boot on a neck, and there is a second conspiracy theory here, held by paranoid schizophrenes, libertarians and other fringe people, which is that normal policing is some kind of tyrannical action.
Normal people who are not part of the extreme progressive tribe think that it is appropriate to put away some dangerous people, and to have government workers in charge of applying the necessary violence to that end.
Such language was last appropriate when Biden-era government people were shutting down businesses and shutting down the bank account of Canadian protesters over some grandma coughing in China.
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