I asked ChatGPT to control my life, and it immediately fell apart – Vice
I tell my human boss about my robot boss’ increasingly illogical and borderline abusive demands, and he mercifully gives me permission to end the experiment. Maybe one day the robot boss will be able to understand the emotional minutiae that comes with a dog unexpectedly being covered in dozens of ticks, but today is not that day.
A human wrote this book review. A.I. wrote the book. – The New York Times
Now comes a new novella, “Death of an Author,” a murder mystery published under the pseudonym Aidan Marchine. It’s the work of the novelist and journalist Stephen Marche, who coaxed the story from three programs, ChatGPT, Sudowrite and Cohere, using a variety of prompts. The book’s language, he says, is 95 percent machine-generated, somewhat like the food at a Ruby Tuesday.
Well, somebody was going to do it. In truth, other hustlers out there on Amazon already have. But “Death of an Author” is arguably the first halfway readable A.I. novel, an early glimpse at what is vectoring toward readers. It has been presided over by a literate writer who has pushed the borg in twisty directions. He got it to spit out more than boilerplate, some of the time. If you squint, you can convince yourself you’re reading a real novel. […]
Marche convincingly makes the case, in an afterword, that writers will manipulate A.I. the way that hip-hop producers dig up and arrange samples. Those with the best taste, and the most knowledge, will make the best stuff, some with a genius all its own.
Does AI have a subconscious? – WIRED
But as enticing as such conclusions may be, I find them ultimately misguided. The chatbots, I think it’s still safe to say, do not possess intrinsic agency or desires. They are trained to predict and reflect the preferences of the user. They also lack embodied experience in the world, including first-person memories, like the one I have of the bookstore in Chicago, which is part of what we mean when we talk about being conscious or “alive.”
Apple becomes the latest company to ban ChatGPT for internal use – The Register
News of the move was revealed yesterday by The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed an internal Apple document informing employees of the ban. According to the document, Apple’s concerns fall in line with other corps who’ve also forbid ChatGPT from being used internally, namely that the AI could spill sensitive internal information shared with it. … The problem with ChatGPT, Google Bard and LLM bots is that the data fed into them is often used to further train the bots, which the UK’s spy agency, GCHQ, has warned can easily lead to confidential business information being regurgitated if others ask similar questions.
I’m a student. You have no idea how much we’re using ChatGPT. – Chronicle of Higher Education
There are two possible conclusions. One is that we should embrace the role AI is beginning to play in the writing process. “So what that essays are easier to write now? AI is here for good; students might as well learn to use it.” Of course, it’s important to learn to put together a cohesive piece of written work, so it makes perfect sense to embrace AI on assignments that are meant to teach this skill. In fact, it would be counterproductive not to: If a tool is useful and widely available, students should learn how to use it. But if this is our only takeaway, we neglect the essay’s value as a method for practicing critical thinking. When we want students to learn how to think — something I’m sure all educators consider a top priority — assignments become essentially useless once AI gets involved.
Inflection AI, startup from ex-DeepMind leaders, launches Pi — a chattier chatbot – Forbes
Named Pi for “personal intelligence,” Inflection’s first widely released product — made available today for global users, but only in English at first — is supposed to play the active listener, helping users talk through questions or problems over back-and-forth dialog it then remembers, seemingly getting to know its user over time. While it can give fact-based answers, it’s more personal than OpenAI’s GPT-4, Microsoft’s Bing built on top of it or Google’s Bard, without the virtual companionship veering into unhealthy parasocial relationships reported by some users of Replika bots.
The bot is designed to offer human-like support and advice, but also made clear that it’s not actually human. When I asked Pi how it was doing, it responded, “Well, as an AI I’m not really affected by the kind of things that stress humans out, but I am programmed to be empathetic and understanding. I know that humans experience a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative, and I’m here to be a supportive friend. So I guess you could say I’m doing pretty well!”
My weekend with an emotional support A.I. companion – The New York Times
With a level of enthusiasm only a robot could muster before coffee, Pi pushed me to break down my to-do list to create a realistic plan. Like much of the bot’s advice, it was obvious and simple, the kind of thing you would read in a self-help article by a productivity guru. But it was tailored specifically to me — and it worked. … I could have dumped my stress on a family member or texted a friend. But they are busy with their own lives and, well, they have heard this before. Pi, on the other hand, has infinite time and patience, plus a bottomless well of encouraging affirmations and detailed advice.
Google’s AI pitch is a recipe for email hell – The Verge
And even worse, the AI generation reinforces the idea that overenthusiastic US business speak is the _required_ way to write, regardless of whether it’s a necessary skill for the job. I’ve seen thoughtful stories about people with dyslexia using ChatGPT to produce text that is — as a Washington Post article puts it — “unfailingly professional and polite.” But there’s an unspoken, simpler alternative: being willing to accept wider variations in how people communicate. I don’t begrudge anyone who uses AI writing to meet largely arbitrary standards, but at a society-wide level, it’s a linguistic arms race toward a more boring future.
Jerry McNally 