Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagChatGPT

person on the precipice
Man standing in a high place looking up in wonder to the Milky Way galaxy. Small silhouette of a man under the Milky Way and the magical starry sky. Concept of human smallness.
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post
Author
News
Date
March 2, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Time for Artificial General Intelligence? Not So Fast, OpenAI

OpenAI CEO is ambitious about the company's direction, but are his hopes profoundly misguided?
News
March 2, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is ambitious about his company’s future, promising the world that they are developing “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) that will supposedly compete with human intelligence, per a recent Futurism piece. However, the ambition is misguided. Or more than that, the ambition is simply delusional. AI is “not even close” to attaining the creativity and intelligence of human beings, and Altman shouldn’t be parading OpenAI products as if it is. Victor Tangermann writes, In reality, however, LLMs have a very long way to go until they’re able to compete with the intellect of a human being — which is why several experts are calling foul on Altman’s recent blog post, calling it meaningless and misleading. After all, AGI Read More ›

a-holographic-head-representing-modern-technology-ai-floats-in-a-classroom-setting-created-with-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
A holographic head representing modern technology / ai floats in a classroom setting. Created with generative ai
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post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
March 1, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Education
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Text Generators, Education, and Critical Thinking: an Update

The fundamental problem remains that, not knowing what words mean, AI has no critical thinking abilities
Gary Smith
March 1, 2023
7
Artificial Intelligence, Education

This past October, I wrote that educational testing was being shaken by the astonishing ability of GPT-3 and other large language models (LLMs) to answer test questions and write articulate essays. I argued that, while LLMs might mimic human conversation, they do not know what words mean. They consequently excel at rote memorization and BS conversation but struggle mightily with assignments that are intended to help students develop their critical thinking abilities, such as Lacking any understanding of semantics, LLMs can do none of this. To illustrate, I asked GPT-3 two questions from a midterm examination I had recently given in an introductory statistics class. Both questions tested students critical thinking skills and GPT-3 bombed both questions. I was hopeful Read More ›

artificial-intelligence-sentient-ai-thinking-for-itself-using-computational-data-and-a-human-like-sense-of-consciousness-and-conscience-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
Artificial intelligence - sentient AI thinking for itself using computational data and a human-like sense of consciousness and conscience. Generative AI
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post
Author
News
Date
March 1, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Ex-Googler Blake Lemoine Still Thinks AI is Sentient

Lemoine posits that because AI can appear to act anxious and stressed, it can be assumed to be sentient
News
March 1, 2023
1
Artificial Intelligence

Blake Lemoine, who formerly worked for Google, has doubled down on his claim that AI systems like LaMDA and Chat-GPT are “sentient.” Lemoine went public on his thoughts on sentience in The Washington Post last June with his bold claim, and since parting ways with Google, has not backed down on his beliefs. Lemoine posits that because AI can appear to act anxious and stressed, it can be assumed to be sentient. Maggie Harrison writes at Futurism, An interesting theory, but still not wholly convincing, considering that chatbots are designed to emulate human conversation — and thus, human stories. Breaking under stress is a common narrative arc; this particular aspect of machine behavior, while fascinating, seems less indicative of sentience, Read More ›

artfcal
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post
Author
Gary Smith
Date
February 27, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Let’s Take the “I” Out of AI

Large language models, though impressive, are not the solution. They may well be the catalyst for calamity.
Gary Smith
February 27, 2023
7
Artificial Intelligence

When OpenAI’s text generator, ChatGPT, was released to the public this past November, the initial reaction was widespread astonishment. Marc Andreessen described it as, “Pure, absolute, indescribable magic.” Bill Gates said that the creation of ChatGPT was as important as the creation of the internet. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, said that, “ChatGPT is one of the greatest things ever created in the computing industry.” Conversations with ChatGPT are, indeed, very much like conversations with a super-intelligent human. For many, it seems that the 70-year search for a computer program that could rival or surpass human intelligence has finally paid off. Perhaps we are close to the long-anticipated singularity where computers improve rapidly and autonomously, leaving humans far behind, Read More ›

portrait-of-a-woman-in-a-black-hat-on-a-black-background-black-and-white-photo-stockpack-adobe-stock
portrait of a woman in a black hat on a black background black and white photo
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post
Author
News
Date
February 27, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Photographer Who Used Midjourney Calls His Own Bluff

The lifelike portraits gained attention, but alas, weren't real
News
February 27, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Joe Avery started posting portraits on his Instagram page in 2022, getting attention and gaining followers at a surprising pace. His pictures were aesthetically pleasing, rendered in black and white, and given captions that assumed the faces in the pictures were legitimately human except, oops. Turns out, they were all AI-generated. Richard Whiddington writes at Artnet News, The problem, one Avery struggled to disclose to his 28,000 followers, was that he was creating the images using Midjourney, an A.I. image generator. Avery made the images by entering a text prompt into Midjourney and then fine-tuning them using Photoshop.” -Richard Whiddington, A Photographer Who Found Instagram Fame for His Striking Portraits Has Confessed His Images Were Actually A.I.-Generated (artnet.com) Avery claimed the images Read More ›

Screenshot 2023-02-24 133413 Robert Marks take 2
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post
Author
News
Date
February 24, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Robert J. Marks Appears On “The Agenda”

Watch Dr. Marks engage with two leading artificial intelligence thinkers on "The Agenda"
News
February 24, 2023
1
Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Robert J. Marks, director of the Walter Bradley Center, appeared on a segment of “The Agenda” recently to speak on the topic of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT. He was joined with Melanie Mitchell of the Sante Fe Institute and MIT’s Max Tegmark. Hosted by Steve Paikin, the three discussed the benefits and drawbacks of artificial intelligence and what it means to be human in a technological age, as well as the perennial question of consciousness. You can watch the entire conversation on YouTube: Dr. Marks had the opportunity to discuss some of the key themes he discusses in his book Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will, contending that AI, while it has benefits, does not Read More ›

computer-eye-stockpack-adobe-stock
Computer Eye
Type
post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
February 24, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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The Metaverse was a Bust. Will AI Save the Day?

Microsoft is counting on it, investing billions into AI research and development
Peter Biles
February 24, 2023
3
Artificial Intelligence

Just a couple of years ago, the metaverse was taking the tech world captive with grandiose promises of revolutionizing the internet and representing the future of human interaction. Microsoft was among the moguls who embraced the metaverse project with open arms, only to face the harsh fact that the technology was underdeveloped, investors were skeptical of its viability, and a massive swath of the American public seemed simply uninterested in the product. But, it was new technology. It was exciting. It was supposed to be the future. Now, Microsoft is hailing AI as the destiny of the internet, again with the sort of optimism that directed their love affair with virtual reality. The company has jumped the gun and sought Read More ›

image-of-robot-book-dark-background-stockpack-adobe-stock
image of robot book dark background
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post
Author
News
Date
February 22, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture
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Separating Fact from Fiction?

This sci-fi journal is being flooded with A.I. generated submissions
News
February 22, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

The major science fiction/fantasy magazine Clarkesworld recently announced that it will be closing submissions for the foreseeable future. Why? A.I. generated stories. The magazine has long been the recipient of open submissions and is interested in publishing new voices, but because of an influx of poor A.I. written works, is now overwhelmed. Editor Neil Clarke wrote on Twitter, “Submissions are currently closed. It shouldn’t be hard to guess why.” Clarke said the closure wouldn’t be definite, but also noted with some severity that this will be an ongoing problem and that there’s no evident solution in sight at the moment. He continued in the Twitter thread: We have some ideas for minimizing it, but the problem isn’t going away. Detectors Read More ›

little bot boi
Businessman holding a light chatbot hologram intelligence AI. Digital chatbot, chatGPT, robot application.Chat GPT chat with AI Artifice intelligent developers digital technology concept.
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post
Author
Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
Date
February 21, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Does New A.I. Live Up to the Hype?

Experts are finding ChatGPT and other LLMs unimpressive, but investors aren't getting the memo
Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
February 21, 2023
7
Artificial Intelligence

Original article was featured at Salon on February 21st, 2023. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI announced the public release of ChatGPT-3, a large language model (LLM) that can engage in astonishingly human-like conversations and answer an incredible variety of questions. Three weeks later, Google’s management — wary that they had been publicly eclipsed by a competitor in the artificial intelligence technology space — issued a “Code Red” to staff. Google’s core business is its search engine, which currently accounts for 84% of the global search market. Their search engine is so dominant that searching the internet is generically called “googling.” When a user poses a search request, Google’s search engine returns dozens of helpful links along with targeted advertisements based on its knowledge of the Read More ›

heart
Robot hand holding heart Technology Future Power
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post
Author
News
Date
February 16, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Love at First Click? A Creepy Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot

New York Times tech journalist thinks AI has crossed a line
News
February 16, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

The new Bing bot is freaky. Kevin Roose is a technology reporter for The New York Times and wrote a piece today detailing his “conversation” with Bing new’s chatbot. To put it simply, it was weird. The chatbot diverged from its initial informational output and ended up introducing itself as “Sydney” and then “confessed its love” for Roose. He writes, For much of the next hour, Sydney fixated on the idea of declaring love for me, and getting me to declare my love in return. I told it I was happily married, but no matter how hard I tried to deflect or change the subject, Sydney returned to the topic of loving me, eventually turning from love-struck flirt to obsessive Read More ›

classroom setting
Male speaker giving presentation in hall at university workshop. Audience or conference hall. Rear view of unrecognized participants in audience. Scientific conference event, training. Education
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post
Author
News
Date
February 16, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Will ChatGPT End Up Improving Higher Education?

Oral exams are an endangered species in higher education today, but they are a powerful tool for evaluating knowledge in a world of AI
News
February 16, 2023
6
Artificial Intelligence

This article was written by Peter Jacobsen and was reposted from MercatorNet under a Creative Commons License. A new artificial intelligence (AI) system called ChatGPT has been released to the public, and many have been shocked to see the extent of its abilities. ChatGPT can accomplish many tasks. For example, it can write poems about any topic, give book recommendations, summarize specific chapters of books, and create workout routines. If you’re asking whether the AI just Google-searches for responses, the answer is no. If you try to find the source of ChatGPT’s responses, you’ll find they are fresh writing. This brings us to the most impactful thing ChatGPT can do when it comes to my fellow academics and me. ChatGPT can write Read More ›

art-collage-businessman-with-a-laptop-instead-of-a-head-online-research-concept-stockpack-adobe-stock
Art collage. Businessman with a laptop instead of a head. Online research concept.
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post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
February 13, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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The Need for Accountability in AI-Generated Content

Just because we live in a world of AI does not mean we can escape responsibility
Jonathan Bartlett
February 13, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence

AI-generated content has become increasingly common on the web. However, as we enter this new era, we will need to think through the moral and social ramifications of what we are doing, and how we should negotiate the new ethical landscape. But first, a brief recap of recent history. The first major player to pioneer AI-generated content was the Associated Press. AP realized that many market-oriented articles were pretty monotonous and read like templates anyway, so they decided to fully commit and auto-generate many of them. If you read an AP story about a company’s earnings report and it sounds eerily like every other story about other companies’ earnings reports, there’s a reason for that. Templated content, while annoying, provides window-dressing to raw Read More ›

editing in red
Red Proofreading Marks and Pen Closeup
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post
Author
Richard W. Stevens
Date
February 10, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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ChatGPT: Beware the Self-Serving AI Editor

The chatbot "edits" by reworking your article to achieve its own goals, not necessarily yours
Richard W. Stevens
February 10, 2023
6
Artificial Intelligence

My article, Utopia’s Braniac (short title), reported results from experiments showing that for one, ChatGPT actually lies, and secondly, it gives results plainly biased to favor certain political figures over others. I next ran a follow-up experiment: asking ChatGPT to “edit and improve” the Utopia’s Brainiac manuscript before submitting it.  Close friends told me they’d used ChatGPT to improve their written work and said the process is easy. So, I tried it myself on February 6, 2023. I entered “Please edit and improve the following essay” and pasted my piece in full text (as ultimately published). In under a minute, ChatGPT delivered its edited and revised copy. What did it do? I. Deleted Whole Section That Gave Readers an Everyday Context Read More ›

on the shores of truth
Aerial Australian Beach Landscape, Great Ocean Road
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post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
February 8, 2023
Categorized
Language
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Awash in a Sea of Digital Information

In the age of infinite online text, maybe less is more
Peter Biles
February 8, 2023
4
Language

Some days after I close my laptop, I’d like to pick up a novel and read or work on a short story project, but then feel like I just need to empty my mind of all the snippets and clips of textual information I’ve consumed that day. News blurbs, thought pieces, emails, provocative tweets, more emails, more news blurbs… Frequently I’ll turn to a TV show or a social media binge in place of the novel. My brain can’t take any more text. It’s burnt out. It’s no secret contemporary Americans live in a sea of images and videos. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook all vie for human attention through images and color schemes designed to catch the distracted eye. Read More ›

bunch of junk
mosaic
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post
Author
News
Date
February 8, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Is It Worth Having ChatGPT Janitors to Clean Up Its Toxic Content?

News
February 8, 2023
7
Artificial Intelligence

This piece by Mathew Otieno originally appeared at MercatorNet (February 8th, 2023) and is republished here under a Creative Commons License. Ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot burst out into the limelight late last year, its popularity has grown by leaps and bounds. By the end of January 2023, according to a report from UBS, a bank, ChatGPT had garnered over 100 million monthly active users, beating all social media sites as the fastest consumer internet service to achieve that distinction. Unsurprisingly, in lockstep with its growing popularity, controversies have also started dogging the company. For instance, in mid-January, Time magazine published a bombshell report about how OpenAI sub-contracted Kenyan workers earning less than US$2 per hour to label toxic content, like violence, sexual abuse and hate speech, to be used to train Read More ›

modern-art-collage-of-a-hand-holding-a-mobile-phone-news-concept-true-or-fake-copy-space-stockpack-adobe-stock
Modern art collage of a hand holding a mobile phone. News concept. True or fake. Copy space.
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post
Author
Richard W. Stevens
Date
February 7, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Utopia’s Brainiac? ChatGPT Gives Biased Views, Not Neutral Truth

Look at what happens when you try to get ChatGPT to offer unbiased responses about political figures
Richard W. Stevens
February 7, 2023
5
Artificial Intelligence

Do you trust your pocket calculator? Why?  Maybe you’re using the calculator app on your phone. Enter: 2 + 2. You get an answer: 4. But you knew that already. Now enter 111 x 111. Do you get 12,321? Is that the correct answer? Work it out with a pencil. That answer is correct. Try 1234 x 5678.  My calculator app returns 7,006,652. Correct? I’m not going to check it. I’m going to trust the calculator. And so it goes. The harder the problem, the more we trust the computer. That’s one reason why many people trumpet the powers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Those systems can give answers to problems we individuals couldn’t solve in a lifetime.  But are the AI “answers” correct?  Read More ›

hand in searchbar
Hand click searching data information networking. Concept for network web and technology
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post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
February 6, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Whatever You Do, Don’t Ask GPT for Sources

The chatbot will give you a lot of links that don't necessarily direct you where you want to go
Jonathan Bartlett
February 6, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence

One of the more amusing things I’ve found from OpenAI’s GPT-3 and ChatGPT is the fact that it will very confidently provide you with sources on anything you ask—and they will often be completely made up. It will even provide fake (but real-looking) URLs for you! I stumbled across this feature when researching a previous GPT-3 article about how well it could write blog posts compared to real authors. I initially tried asking GPT-3 to include sources, and it generated complete nonsense for the sources. I decided that, for that article, sources were not the main question, so I left it out of the final queries. However, in response to my latest article about ChatGPT not being a Google replacement, someone commented Read More ›

person at the internet
Business man works in office with laptop. Concept of internet network. double exposure
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post
Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
January 30, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Why ChatGPT Won’t Replace Google

With Google, the algorithm eventually leads you to content made by real people. With ChatGPT, you never leave the algorithm
Jonathan Bartlett
January 30, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

To some extent, ChatGPT is a newer, easier-to-use interface than Google.  Unlike Google, it doesn’t make you waste time by visiting those pesky websites.  It not only looks into its database for content, but it also summarizes it for you as paragraphs. There is a problem lurking in there, however.  Being computers, neither Google nor ChatGPT cares about the truth.  They are algorithms, and they merely do as they are told.  Additionally, you can’t code the human mind into algorithms.  However, there is a fundamental difference between what ChatGPT does and what Google does that will prevent content generators like ChatGPT from displacing search engines like Google: Google eventually lets you out of its system. Ultimately, the goal of search Read More ›

AI taking exam
Generative AI illustration of cute little robot reading assignment on paper during exam at school
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post
Author
News
Date
January 26, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Education
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AI Can Pass the MBA Exam, Wharton Professor Says

In the wake of ChatGPT uproar, its abilities (and limits) are becoming better understood
News
January 26, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence, Education

OpenAI’s ChatGPT passed the Master of Business Administration (MBA) exam according to a news report from NBC. Professor Christian Terwiesch of Wharton, who conducted the research and authored a paper on the matter, said that the bot scored somewhere in the B range on the exam, and that this has major implications for education. The report is just another in a flux of news and concerns about AI invading the spheres of education and academia. Terwiesch wrote, [The bot’s score shows] remarkable ability to automate some of the skills of highly compensated knowledge workers in general and specifically the knowledge workers in the jobs held by MBA graduates including analysts, managers, and consultants.” Despise its apparent advancement, the bot did Read More ›

3-d-illustration-of-a-man
3 D illustration of a man's head and brain with graphic elements. Artificial intelligence and machine learning concept.
Type
podcast
Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
January 26, 2023
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Is the Human Brain Just GPT-3 Made of Meat?

Robert J. Marks
January 26, 2023
1
In this episode, Robert J. Marks talks with Pat Flynn on the Philosophy for the People podcast. Together they discuss the benefits and limits of the GPT-3, the mind-body problem, and the unique, “non-computable” qualities of the human person. Read More ›