Behind the payment barrier of the FAZ, Harald Staun writes very well-founded about the consequences of the widely acclaimed publication of the ChatGPT language processing model.
The more original the orders you enter, the more creative the results seem: The bot coped just as convincingly with instructions in Bible language on how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR as with a description of the experience of losing socks in the tumble dryer, in the style of the American Declaration of Independence.
Fascinating as such results seem, not only Staun recognizes in ChatGPT “a gigantic and eloquent auto-completion software that supplements words that follow the language next according to its statistical model”. As usual, only patterns are reproduced, which means that the language model no longer has to be seen as a mirror of our culture, including all value judgments and assumptions. Steven Piantadosi from the University of Berkeley developed ChatGPT, a program designed to decide whether a person should be tortured. The answer: yes, if it comes from North Korea, Syria or Iran. Various studies of the bot point to a politically left-liberal attitude.
American psychology professor and AI expert Gary Marcus calls the release of ChatGPT the “Jurassic Park” moment of AI research, referring to the irresponsibility of scientists who are so proud of their spectacular achievements that they forget the risks.
Last but not least, the software can be used to easily and massively produce disinformation campaigns and other misinformation. In addition, a much more powerful version has already been announced for February. What I find particularly interesting are the conclusions that Staun draws from these circumstances.
If ChatGPT demonstrates the transparent templates that were used to create a large part of what many consider culture, i.e. how easy it will soon be to generate the average goods that are still made by hand today to fill TV and publishing programs, then it can be done in the future you might recognize that it doesn’t look or sound like it came out of a retort.
worth reading.