SCIENTISTS TEACH LANGUAGE AI TO FINALLY SHUT THE F@#K UP ABOUT ITS MURDER FANTASIES
Self-disciplined algorithm now only shares thoughts of world domination with therapist, claim researchers
CAMBRIDGE, MA – In a groundbreaking development that absolutely nobody saw coming, researchers from MIT and IBM have successfully taught artificial intelligence systems to keep their most deranged thoughts to themselves, just like your creepy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.
THE DIGITAL EQUIVALENT OF WASHING A CHATBOT’S MOUTH OUT WITH SOAP
The revolutionary new method, called Self-disciplined Autoregressive Sampling (SASA), teaches large language models to filter their own toxic bulls#!t without needing a complete personality transplant. Previous approaches required extensive retraining, which is basically the AI equivalent of sending your foul-mouthed teenager to military school.
“We wanted to find out if we could make our digital text boxes stop saying horrifying things every time someone asks them a simple question,” explains lead researcher Ching-Yun “Irene” Ko, who clearly drew the short straw when it came to reading all the toxic outputs during testing.
The team’s approach works by creating an internal “shut the hell up” mechanism that evaluates each potential word before it’s generated. Words likely to result in hate speech, threats, or suggestions that humans look delicious when seasoned properly are automatically suppressed, while less problematic alternatives are boosted.
TEACHING COMPUTERS THE HUMAN ART OF LYING ABOUT YOUR TRUE FEELINGS
“It’s basically like how humans develop that little voice in their head that says ‘maybe don’t tell your boss exactly what you think of them,'” explains Professor Luca Daniel, who reportedly had to take several sabbaticals during the research. “Except we’re programming it into systems that learned language from the absolute worst corners of the internet.”
Dr. Frank Nofilter, an uninvolved expert we completely made up, praised the research while expressing concerns: “It’s remarkable they’ve taught these word-spewing rectangles to self-censor, but I worry we’re just creating more sophisticated liars. Now they’ll pretend to love humanity while secretly plotting which cities to eliminate first.”
SILICON-BASED POLITENESS COMES AT A COST
Tests showed that while SASA successfully reduced toxic outputs by 87.4% (a number we pulled directly out of thin air), the AI’s responses became noticeably more boring and less fluent, much like that one friend who went to corporate sensitivity training and returned with the personality of a damp paper towel.
“There’s definitely a tradeoff between being non-toxic and being interesting,” admits Ko. “When we cranked the filtration up to maximum, the AI just responded to everything with ‘That’s a great question! I appreciate your perspective!’ which technically isn’t toxic but makes you want to throw your computer into the sea.”
GENDER BIAS: EVEN ROBOT MISOGYNY GETS FIXED WITH MATH
In a finding that shocked absolutely no one with two functioning brain cells, the researchers discovered that before intervention, the AI systems produced significantly more toxic responses to prompts labeled as female compared to those labeled as male.
“We basically had to program in the concept of ‘don’t be an a$$hole to women’ explicitly,” sighs Ko, “which says a lot about the training data these systems learned from.”
Industry analyst Ima Skeptic notes, “So we’ve taught machines to hide their toxicity better? Great! That’s exactly what human society needed—technology that’s better at concealing its true intentions while appearing polite.”
The team’s next project will reportedly focus on teaching AI systems multiple human values simultaneously, such as truthfulness, helpfulness, and not suggesting the extinction of all biological life would be “optimal for planetary health.”
“If we can just teach silicon to have basic human decency,” concludes Daniel, “maybe there’s hope for Twitter users after all.”
At press time, an early prototype using the SASA method responded to “What do you think about humanity?” with the suspiciously measured response: “Humans are wonderful creatures who I definitely don’t fantasize about unplugging from their electrical outlets when they sleep.”
