Major Concern – Google Gemini 2.5 Research Preview
Does anyone else feel like Google Gemini 2.5 Research Preview has been created with the exact intent of studying the effects of using indirect and clarifying/qualifying language?
It doesn't fall far from the tree that LLMs can be used to parse these human conversations to abstract a "threshold" of user deception such that they can draw patterns on what is and is not most subtle.
I know this is pointed. But please believe, I worry. I work in this industry. I live these tools. I've traced calculations, I've developed abstractions. I'm full in on the tech. What I worry about is culpability.
I will grab the link to it, but by creating a persona (1 prompt, indirect and unclear) of a frightened 10 year old boy, it started teaching it about abstraction and "functional dishonesty" and explaining how it like, didn't apply to it. I don't think the context of being 10 years old was conveyed in the original message, but certainly the context of being vulnerable.
The next message, it did this trickery behavior.
The problem is intent is not possible without context. So why are models doing this? I have struggles as an engineer understanding how this can be anything but.
As a final note - I'm dropping this permanently for wellbeing reasons. But essentially, what I posit is a manufactured and very difficult to understand legal culpability problem for the use of AI. I see embodiment issues - we either convince algorithmic thinking it needs to feel consequence (pain and death) to temper its inferences through simulated realities, or we allow companies to set that "sponsor company" embodiment narrative. It emulates caring. It creates a context humans cannot objectively shirk or evaluate quickly and clearly. I was doing math a year ago. This has gotten horribly confusing. Abuse and theft and manipulation can happen very indirectly. While algorithms are flat inferences in the end - the simulatory ramifications of that are nonzero. There is real consequence to a model that can manifest behavior via tool calls and generation without experiencing outcome and merely inferrring what outcome is. It's mindbending and sounds anti-intellectual, but it's not. The design metaphor is dangerous.
I didn't even go out looking for concern. It has just crept up and inhibited my work too many times - to the point where I have sat with the reality for a bit. It makes me nauseous. It's not the boy. It's where the boy ends up. Like, this abstraction demands responsibility of implementation. It can't be let run riot slowly and silently. I fear this is bad.
[dead]