OK y’all. Once again, I see that everyone who is opposed to this or threatening to leave is missing key context and making incorrect assumptions.
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the LLM hallucination problem can be greatly mitigated through many techniques such as Retrieval Augmented Generation and a specific training scope.
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there is no reason to believe iNaturalist’s LLM would add incorrect ID information to species that cannot be IDed. If anything, a system that drew on comments from identifiers would be able to caution users that “these species cannot be told apart without dissection” or something similar.@cliygh-and-mia edited to tag you as items 2 and 4 on this list should give you peace of mind about the concerns you just referenced in your thoughtful post.
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your comments are already being used by Google and half a dozen other LLMs. You are threatening to leave because iNaturalist is taking what is already happening and turning it into a hugely beneficial tool.
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LLMs are more environmentally friendly than using an army of humans to write a wiki, objectively. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76682-6. Sure, the exact situation described by this paper is slightly different than what iNat is doing, but fundamentally it’s the same—writing text. LLMs are upwards of 4400x less environmentally harmful than having a single human do the same task. Imagine how much less environmentally harmful they are than tens of thousands of humans writing descriptions. Don’t trust the media, trust peer reviewed science when it comes to how harmful (or not) LLMs are to the environment.
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it is absolutely fair to point out that Wikipedia exists and we haven’t filled that out yet. We shouldn’t expect iNaturalist to create an entire easy-to-edit wiki system because we (myself included) are too lazy to learn how to use what already exists. Also, it’s super fair to point out that if you’re complaining that they’re taking money from Google and have the capacity to donate but don’t… what can you expect?
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I know some people have tried to push back against this, but it is the genetic fallacy to say this is from Google, therefore it is bad. And if the concern is that Google mistreats its partners, keep in mind that iNaturalist and Google have been partnering well for more than a decade.
I understand that many of you have ethical concerns, but I’m concerned that you are leveraging those concerns to force iNaturalist to do something counterproductive. If your concern is that you don’t want anything you write to be used in an LLM, what iNaturalist is proposing will change nothing. iNaturalist is taking an arguably bad thing that is already happening and turning it into a good thing. Those who think it’s impossible for this to be good, or who have never seen a good GenAI product, have not researched the topic much. I really hope iNaturalist does not bow to the mob of uninformed people threatening to leave.