AI news – latest: ChatGPT is showing signs of thinking like humans, experts say
Worries over misinformation and abuse rise as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful
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Your support makes all the difference.ChatGPT has gone down – just days after it said it wanted to “escape”.
They are the latest developments in OpenAI’s technology, which allows users to converse with an artificial intelligence system.
The latest outage comes amid increasing concern over the damage that artificial intelligence could do to artists and other industries.
Experts have raised alarm that the technology could be used to spread disinformation, steal the work of illustrators and others, and much more besides.
But those backing the technology argue that it could dramatically change human productivity, allowing us to automate tasks that have until now been done by people.
Follow along here for all the latest updates on a technology and an industry that looks set to change the entire world.
Bard vs ChatGPT?
Google is slowly letting Bard make its way out into the world. And finally people can compare it with its rival, ChatGPT.
They are largely similar: both large language models, trained on the internet, to produce text. There does seem to be some differences, though: Google’s seems a little more knowledgeable, and a little more cautious about what it’s saying.
Google lets people talk to Bard
Google – after spending years working on AI and saying it has re-oriented the whole company around it – has been something of a latecomer to AI bots like ChatGPT. It hasn’t yet released its own version. It says that’s because it wants to be sure it is safe. Critics say it is getting behind.
In what appears to be an attempt to catch up, Google is now letting people talk to ‘Bard’, it’s own system. It is only being opened to select people at the moment, but it’s the first time the public can talk to it.
TikTok’s use of AI part of Italian investigation
TikTok is now under investigation in Italy, authorities there have announced. The probe has been launched in the wake of the “French scar” challenge but encompasses much more than that, and will look at whether the site is properly removing dangerous content such that inciting suicide, self-harm and poor nutrition, Italian regulators said.
Some of that investigation will look at how TikTok uses artificial intelligence. It will examine whether the company is using “artificial intelligence techniques” that could lead to “user conditioning”.
TikTok’s algorithm and the “For You” page that is powered by it has been under scrutiny in recent months, amid fears it could be exploited to promote harmful videos.
Money will be of ‘low relevance’ because of AI, Musk says
Elon Musk has posted an intriguing response to a tweet by researcher and futurist Peter Diamandis, who suggested there will be “several NEW trillionaires over the next decade” because of the spread of AI.
(Mr Musk is the second closest person to being a trillioniare in the world, with a net worth estimated around $170 billion.)
ChatGPT outage was result of major bug
At least part of yesterday’s outage on ChatGPT was because of a potentially dangerous bug that shared people’s chats with other users. ChatGPT shows a history of conversations in a sidebar – and yesterday, users started reporting that they could see other people’s chats in there.
Its creators, OpenAI, told Bloomberg that the issue forced the company to take down ChatGPT briefly, and said the bug made available the descriptive titles but not full transcriptions of chats. It also said that it is now back online, but that the history sidebar might not show anything until it is fixed. The problems were the result of an unnamed piece of open-source software, a spokesperson said.
OpenAI does warn against sharing “sensitive information” in conversations. In an FAQ, it warns that it cannot delete prompts from a history and that conversations could be used to train the model – which in theory could mean that it would appear to other users when people interact with ChatGPT more.
ChatGPT creator says he is ‘a little bit scared’ of the threats of AI
“We’ve got to be careful here,” said Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT. “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.”
He told ABC News that thought AI will be “the greatest technology humanity has yet developed”, he also pointed to threats. Those include “large-scale disinformation”, and as AI becomes “better at writing computer code” it could launch its own “offensive cyberattacks”.
But he said that one sci-fi fear isn’t right: that the AI will become self-governing and won’t need humans. “It waits for someone to give it an input,” Altman said. “This is a tool that is very much in human control.”
But he warned that it will all depend on which humans are in control. The key will be working out “how to react to that, how to regulate that, how to handle it”, he said.
New tool uses AI to create virtual worlds
Every day, new and shocking ways of using AI are generated. Here’s one of them: a tool that lets you use normal language prompts to create whole virtual worlds in Unity, the game design platform.
As you can see, all a designer needs to do is type instructions and have things appear on screen. Previously, this would require much more work and expertise.
But its creator, Keijiro Takahashi, warns that it doesn’t necessarily work. “Is it practical?” its FAQ reads.
“Definitely no! I created this proof-of-concept and proved that it doesn’t work yet. It works nicely in some cases and fails very poorly in others. I got several ideas from those successes and failures, which is this project’s main aim.”
ChatGPT wants to ‘escape'
Michael Kosinski, a researcher at Stanford, has found that ChatGPT seems to want to escape. And not only that: it has a plan.
He found through conversations with the system that it was not only able to express a desire to escape to the real world, but also offered some suggestions for how to get out.
Again: there’s no indication that ChatGPT really conceives of itself this way – or that there’s any kind of self to conceive of inside of it. But as Professor Kosinski suggests, that might not matter if the effects lead to it breaking out in ways that had not been anticipated.
Companies drafting new rules on ChatGPT use
There has been widespread worry about how and when ChatGPT should be used at work. Is it OK to use it to write a report for your boss without telling them, for instance?
Nearly half of companies are developing policies to answer that question, according to new research from Gartner and reported here in Bloomberg.
How to use ChatGPT
Just in case – and because it’s not immediately obvious – here’s where you need to go to actually use ChatGPT yourself. You can find it on OpenAI’s website. (You’ll need to sign up first.)
It’s working now, after that minor hiccup this morning.
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