Recourse for reclamation: Chatting with generative language models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chien, Jennifer, McKee, Kevin R., Kay, Jackie, Isaac, William
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Chien, Jennifer
McKee, Kevin R.
Kay, Jackie
Isaac, William
author_facet Chien, Jennifer
McKee, Kevin R.
Kay, Jackie
Isaac, William
contents Researchers and developers increasingly rely on toxicity scoring to moderate generative language model outputs, in settings such as customer service, information retrieval, and content generation. However, toxicity scoring may render pertinent information inaccessible, rigidify or "value-lock" cultural norms, and prevent language reclamation processes, particularly for marginalized people. In this work, we extend the concept of algorithmic recourse to generative language models: we provide users a novel mechanism to achieve their desired prediction by dynamically setting thresholds for toxicity filtering. Users thereby exercise increased agency relative to interactions with the baseline system. A pilot study ($n = 30$) supports the potential of our proposed recourse mechanism, indicating improvements in usability compared to fixed-threshold toxicity-filtering of model outputs. Future work should explore the intersection of toxicity scoring, model controllability, user agency, and language reclamation processes -- particularly with regard to the bias that many communities encounter when interacting with generative language models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_14467
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Recourse for reclamation: Chatting with generative language models
Chien, Jennifer
McKee, Kevin R.
Kay, Jackie
Isaac, William
Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
Researchers and developers increasingly rely on toxicity scoring to moderate generative language model outputs, in settings such as customer service, information retrieval, and content generation. However, toxicity scoring may render pertinent information inaccessible, rigidify or "value-lock" cultural norms, and prevent language reclamation processes, particularly for marginalized people. In this work, we extend the concept of algorithmic recourse to generative language models: we provide users a novel mechanism to achieve their desired prediction by dynamically setting thresholds for toxicity filtering. Users thereby exercise increased agency relative to interactions with the baseline system. A pilot study ($n = 30$) supports the potential of our proposed recourse mechanism, indicating improvements in usability compared to fixed-threshold toxicity-filtering of model outputs. Future work should explore the intersection of toxicity scoring, model controllability, user agency, and language reclamation processes -- particularly with regard to the bias that many communities encounter when interacting with generative language models.
title Recourse for reclamation: Chatting with generative language models
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.14467