LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity

Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by bsuvc on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:28PM (#36579641)

Is "red team" a verb now? I barely even know what that means. I assume it stems from the "red team" being bad guys in video games, but am not certain. Even with that assumption, I'm not quite sure what "red team into toxicity" really means other than being a scary sounding headline.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by eli on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:30PM (#36579659)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team Is the first hit in google

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by jzombie on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:32PM (#36579674)

Admittedly I didn't know what it was either, but had a ChatGPT window open, so I asked it, first, what a "red team" is.

In the context of cybersecurity, a "red team" refers to a group of individuals who simulate attacks or test the security of a system to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

Then, is it a verb?

In the given headline, "red team" functions as a verb phrase. Specifically, "red team" is used as a verb in the infinitive form. The phrase "to automatically red team" indicates the action of assessing or evaluating LLMs for toxicity using automated methods.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by red-iron-pine on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @01:04PM (#36589459)

I've heard it as a verb for sure -- "I've been red-teaming at X Corp for a while now"

But in a broader sense it's oppositional actions taken against a "good guy", usually with the goal of improving the good guy aka the Blue Team.

Think Starcraft or other video games where you have a little radar in the corner; good guys are blue, bad guys are red.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:35PM (#36579699)

It’s an information security “penetration testing” reference. Red Team is trying to “attack” some other Blue Team.

The meaning seems to be that an LLM can have certain vulnerabilities exploited (“red teamed”) such that it exhibits behaviors that its training algorithm had intended it to avoid.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by Given_47 on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:30PM (#36579666)

“A red team is an independent security team that poses as an attacker to gauge vulnerabilities and risk within a controlled environment.”

Is what I’m working off of

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by AlecSchueler on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:32PM (#36579675)

That doesn't help much! What does "red team" mean as a verb in this case?

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by eli on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:42PM (#36579759)

To do the work of a red team. To try to break something in order to identify its flaws.

It’s very common in English for nouns to become verbs that mean the thing you use the noun to do.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF on Monday July 03, 2023 @07:07PM (#36579972)

I don’t know if that’s historically common but I sometimes verb like this when I’m too lazy to think of phrases like “think of phrases”. (Here’s to hoping that makes any sense.)

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by xwn on Monday July 03, 2023 @09:01PM (#36580833)

English verbs nouns all the time

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by sokoloff on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:37PM (#36579725)

I don’t like it, but the usage is “[attack as a] red team”, in other words “act in an adversarial manner”.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by ShadowBanThis01 on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:33PM (#36579684)

In that context, the title still makes no sense.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by belval on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:39PM (#36579749)

You sometime see it as "red teaming" or "red team'ed" which might be more grammatically correct?

Regardless, "to red team something" really is a common saying in the security industry. It's the corpo/whitehat version of "to pwn".

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by ShadowBanThis01 on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:30PM (#36579664)

The headline makes no grammatical sense.

Disenfranchised Reddit dweebs downvoting this fact.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by Der_Einzige on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:43PM (#36579768)

Pedantic stuff like this is the argumentative version of bike-shedding.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by ShadowBanThis01 on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @03:02AM (#36583180)

Haha, well played! Don't forget to throw in some more meaningless crap, like "dog-fooding."

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by ksenzee on Monday July 03, 2023 @06:44PM (#36579782)

If we’re going to be pedantic, your objection is to usage, not grammar. “Red team” clearly functions as a verb in the headline. Whether or not it’s an acceptable verb is a question of usage.

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Re:LLMs are too easy to automatically red team into toxicity by ShadowBanThis01 on Tuesday July 04, 2023 @03:07AM (#36583221)

The title has been changed since it was originally posted. It didn't make grammatical sense, and that's what I meant.

And if someone is going to be so lazy as to attempt to turn non-verbs into verbs, they deserve extra scorn for not even bothering to hyphenate them.

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