Understand the limits (and consequences).
First, it’s important to understand how technology works so you know exactly what you’re doing with it.
ChatGPT is essentially a more powerful and sophisticated version of the predictive text system on our phones, which suggests words to complete a sentence as we type using what it’s learned from large amounts of data fetched from the web.
Nor can he verify whether what he says is true.
If you use a chatbot to code a program, it examines how the code was compiled in the past. Because code is constantly updated to address security vulnerabilities, code written with a chatbot could be buggy or insecure, Christian said.
Likewise, if you’re using ChatGPT to write an essay on a classic book, chances are the bot will construct seemingly plausible arguments. But if others have published an erroneous analysis of the book on the web, that may also show up in your essay. If your essay were then published online, you would be contributing to the spread of false information.
“They can trick us into thinking they understand more than they understand, and that can cause problems,” said Santa Fe Institute artificial intelligence researcher Melanie Mitchell.
In other words, the bot does not think independently. It can’t even count.
An example: I was stunned when I asked ChatGPT to compose a haiku poem about the cold in San Francisco. He spat out lines with the incorrect number of syllables:
Fog covers the city,
The brisk winds chill to the bone,
Winter in San Francisco.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, declined to comment for this column.
Similarly, AI-powered image-editing tools like Lensa train their algorithms with existing images on the web. Therefore, if women are presented in more sexualized contexts, the machines will recreate that bias, Ms. Mitchell said.
Tech
