TagOpenAI
Hype Distracts AI Engineers from Real Work
Who is going to solve AI's actual problems?
Scarlett Johansson vs. Sam Altman
OpenAI is trying to recreate a cautionary tale
Napster, Spotify, and AI: How Will AI Escape Copyright Woes?
Robert J. Marks on AI and learning from past copyright cases.Copyright lawsuits are abounding against generative AI. Since the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022, various companies, artists, and writers have raised concerns over AI’s plagiaristic tendencies. Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, has the story over at Newsmax. Marks recalls the debacle of Napster, a music streaming service that provided music for “free” without payment to the artists. Not surprisingly, it was soon shut down. So how will it fare with generative AI? What’s the solution to all the impending legal woes in the realm of AI? Marks writes, Today’s Spotify keeps automatic records of song frequency and, from subscriber’s payments, distributes royalties accordingly. Similar methods could be applied to compensate content creators by generative AI. It’s not Read More ›
Does ChatGPT Depend on Copyright Violation to Function?
Without copyrighted material, ChatGPT has slim pickings to go on.ChatGPT, the large language model developed by OpenAI, might seem like it generates novel content, but of course we know that it partakes in what’s generally called “scraping.” It takes pre-existing material on the Internet in response to the prompt a human user inserts. Not surprisingly, the folks who put things on the Internet for a living, like writers and artists, haven’t taken so kindly to AI’s online sleuthing. In fact, a number of artists, writers (including George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and John Grisham) and even news outlets have sued OpenAI over copyright infringement allegations. What’s fascinating, though, is that OpenAI hasn’t tried to dodge the allegation but freely admits that ChatGPT depends on copyrighted material to function. Read More ›
How Do We Define Successful Use Cases for Generative AI?
Current generative AI systems are designed to give us the most common solutions, instead of the new ones we need.
Sam Altman Out at OpenAI, Microsoft Picks Him Up
Will Microsoft become the prime leader in the AI movement, and what will be the future of OpenAI?
Artificial Intelligence: The Final Stage of Disembodiment?
The Internet invites a disembodied existence. Is AI the next step?
Literature and Personal Consciousness: Why AI Can’t Speak to You
AI can never intend meaning like a human author can
OpenAI CEO: Yes, AI Will Take Jobs Away
Technology has historically replaced human workers only to add new jobs. Is AI any different?Sam Altman, the CEO of the AI company OpenAI, which was responsible for developing the Large Language Model ChatGPT, said in an interview with The Atlantic that AI will definitely be taking some jobs away, striking a blow to some AI optimists who claim that this won’t be the case. According to Business Insider, “A lot of people working on AI pretend that it’s only going to be good; it’s only going to be a supplement; no one is ever going to be replaced,” he said. “Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.” –ChatGPT Creator Sam Altman Says ‘Jobs Are Definitely Going to Go Away’ (businessinsider.com) While certain jobs might go the wayside, it’s possible AI could introduce Read More ›
ChatGPT: The Perfect Gadget for a Culture in Decline?
ChatGPT is an impersonal machine and can't generate meaningDr. Jeffrey Bilbro, professor of English at Grove City College and an editor at The Front Porch Republic, wrote an article for Plough on what he regards as the primary weakness of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. Bilbro comes to the issue from a literary background, which means he values the human element in language as a mode of communication. Literature is a “conversation,” requiring sentient minds. He sees ChatGPT as a soulless mechanism that will atrophy our ability to write and diminish our appreciation for good writing. Bilbro writes, LLMs are a technology suited to a decadent culture, one that chases easy profits rather than tackles the real challenges we face. It’s easier to make money rearranging words Read More ›
Do AI Developers Really Not Know What They’re Making?
A speech-and-language AI researcher counterclaims the doomsdayersA new article by AI researcher Arlie Coles at American Mind aims to “demystify” artificial intelligence, particularly the claim that AI creators have no idea what they’re creating. Coles says that we understand AI much better than the doomsdayers let on. Part of the reason for AI’s cloudy nature is due to its mathematical complexity, which Coles finds understandable. But that’s no reason not to try and understand what AI is and gauge its benefits and capacities in an accurate light. She writes, We do know what we’re building and how it works, and it’s not too late for us to speak forthrightly about AI so that the general public, not just those with math or computer science Ph.D.s, can Read More ›
Mission Impossible: A Dead Reckoning With Artificial Intelligence
The villain in the new blockbuster movie is an artificial intelligence known simply as "the entity."I walked into the theater expecting a typical villain in the latest installment of Mission Impossible starring the inimitable Tom Cruise. And at the film’s beginning, you’re definitely led to believe that the pale, sour-faced Russians are behind yet another espionage program destined to thwart America and conquer the world. But that’s only a front. The real villain in the new blockbuster movie is an artificial intelligence known simply as “the entity.” The impossible mission, tasked to Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is to track down a mysterious key, made of two separate parts, that apparently can unlock the entity and reveal what it’s capable of. God in the Machine Hunt and his usual gang of expatriates find themselves at odds with Read More ›
Musk: My AI Will “Understand Reality”
xAI, Musk's alternative to OpenAI, is shrouded in ambitious hopesTech giant and billionaire Elon Musk is starting yet another company, and this one has to do with the talk of the town: artificial intelligence. The name of the venture is “xAI.” It’s been an interesting week in the tech and AI world. Meta released “Threads,” a Twitter alternative, and OpenAI is now under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, calling the AI company into question for its data scraping methods and ChatGPT’s tendency to spin false information. Now that AI is the apple in ever tech mogul’s eye at the moment, I guess it makes sense that Musk is reaching for the branch of temptation. He’s been teasing his hopes for his own AI company for a few months Read More ›
OpenAI is Now Under Investigation
The Federal Trade Commission wants to know how OpenAI gets their data and how much harm ChatGPT could haveThe Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.) sent a letter to OpenAI, the San Fransisco company responsible for creating ChatGPT, the Large Language Model that captured the world’s imagination in November of 2022. Per the New York Times, the F.T.C. is investigating the AI company’s methods of data acquisition and also plans on measuring the potential harms of AI on society, citing concerns over false information and job replacement. Cecilia Kang and Cade Metz report: In a 20-page letter sent to the San Francisco company this week, the agency said it was also looking into OpenAI’s security practices. The F.T.C. asked the company dozens of questions in its letter, including how the start-up trains its A.I. models and treats personal data. The Read More ›
Does ChatGPT Pass the Creativity Test?
What does ChatGPT have to do in order to be considered creative?What is creativity? Where does it come from? Why are some things humans do considered creative, while other things mundane? Can AI be creative? To answer these questions, let’s come up with a definition. Creativity at least means something new has been done. No work that copies what has come before is considered creative. A Creativity Criteria Just doing something new is not enough either. If it were, then I can easily be creative by flipping a coin 100 times. That specific sequence of coin flips will only occur once in the entire history of humanity. But no one would say I was creative when I flipped a coin. This means creativity has to generate a new insight. However, these two criteria are not adequate, Read More ›
AI Can Do It All So You Don’t Have To
Sometimes satire says it bestSatire is often best at uncovering uncomfortable truths. Much of the talk around AI progress celebrates its ability to make certain tasks way easier, such as writing essays, programming computer code, or firing your employees. While that is certainly true, the concern remains that if we depend on AI like this for long enough we might just forget how to put two and two together and write a sentence over ten words long. That’s probably cynical, but the principle is there – depending on technology to perform mental tasks will lessen the ability to independently perform those same mental tasks. The popular satire site The Onion published a paragraph about a hypothetical man who is delighted about AI because it Read More ›
Don’t Tell Google Bard Your Secrets
Executives are warning employees of potential privacy leaksGoogle’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., advised its employees not to share personal information with the chatbot “Bard,” noting that doing so could lead to privacy leaks, which has reportedly already happened at Samsung. Kevin Hurler reports, Four sources close to the matter told Reuters that the massive tech giant has advised employees not to enter confidential information into chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s own Bard over fears of leaks. Alphabet is reportedly concerned with employees inputting sensitive information into these chatbots since human reviewers may sit on the other end reviewing chat entries. These chatbots may also use previous entries to train themselves, posing another risk of a leak. That risk is warranted, as Samsung confirmed last month that its own internal Read More ›
AI Plays the Reverend
An AI chatbot gave a sermon at a church in Germany, allegedly telling congregants "not to fear death."An AI chatbot gave a sermon at a church in Germany, allegedly telling congregants “not to fear death.” University of Vienna theologian and philosopher Jonas Simmerlein was responsible for the service and for giving the ChatGPT bot its prompts. Talk about eerie. Even churches are starting to incorporate AI into their homilies. Simmerlein noted that overall the chatbot gave “a pretty solid service,” and included psalms, prayers, and also mentions of climate change and Ukraine. Not all the congregants got the same impression. Per the report from Fox News, in conjunction with the Associated Press, some church attendants felt put off by the chatbot’s mechanical and impersonal delivery. One woman expressed, “There was no heart and no soul,” Heiderose Schmidt, Read More ›
The LLM Deep Fake—Follow the Money
Hype sells. Just look at what's happening with AILarge language models (LLMs) are far more impressive now than they were just a few months or a year ago. Compare these exchanges I had with GPT-3 in June 2022 and with ChatGPT two days ago: Gary: Can I improve my test scores if I study after taking the test? GPT-3: That’s a good question. I’m not sure if you can improve your test scores by studying after taking the test, but it couldn’t hurt to try! ChatGPT: Studying after taking a test is unlikely to directly improve your scores on that particular test since the test has already been completed. Once a test is finished, the opportunity to answer questions and provide responses has passed. However, studying after taking Read More ›