ChatGPT



ChatGPT is an AI chatbot by OpenAI based on their GPT-3.5 (and, in the paid edition, GPT-4) large language model. It was released in November 2022. Like many past chatbots (more basic types go ), ChatGPT allows users to have more or less natural conversations with an AI – but it stood apart from earlier chatbots through its ability to perform a wider range of tasks, such as writing or revising texts of many kinds, even code in various programming languages, and theatrically playing scripted roles in exchanges with the user if and as instructed to.

Language models work by filling in the blanks according to how probable it seems that something should follow or go along with e.g. a named topic and some description, based on how the model was trained. This has been called "stochastic parroting", and is a little like a person saying so-and-so under some circumstances knowing that it is often said then and likely to win approval, but without knowing what it actually means (i.e. bullshitting). A large language model has a superhuman database to draw on, and thus, a superhuman ability to always say something plausible-sounding no matter what it is asked for. It's often able to get the answer right, or even correctly correct a human. But you never know when it may falsify some crucial detail.

By December 2022, ChatGPT went viral and received quite positive reviews from journalists. Hype built in the corporate world, and also fear that ChatGPT may turn out a "Google killer"; Google scrambled to create a competitor called while Microsoft invested in creating a Bing Search chatbot, based on OpenAI's GPT-4, which by testers was described as unhinged, manic depressive, a manipulative liar, and more. (Microsoft thereafter limited the chat session length to keep the bot from derailing, along with further changes.) The Chinese corporate world also latched on to the hype and geared up to create its own clones.

Fears also spread of ChatGPT being used for plagiarism by students, and of it furthering the spread of disinformation. Tools for detecting LLM AI-generated texts entered use within half a year of ChatGPT being released, but they are unreliable, with 10% or more false positives, some systematic patterns of failure, and the possibility of circumventing detection with ease.

Sample prompt
In this example, ChatGPT is asked to write an article about Young Earth creationism in the style of this website. The response below has been copied directly from the website, showing its ability to write human-like text while imitating the writing style of a specific website, in this case, RationalWiki.

Note that this text from ChatGPT provides a key fact concerning Biblical literalism, and summarizes some things well enough, but also gets a bit repetitive and caricature-like in its showcasing of a style. This is a general pattern when ChatGPT is asked to write articles; it tends to stay shallow, and most of the text is there to give an impression rather than inform. Further, when writing a shorter or less detailed text, ChatGPT often gets the facts right, but if asked to provide a lot of details, then it will begin making things up.

Prompt: ''Write an encyclopedia article about Young Earth creationism in the style of "RationalWiki". Write it from a snarky and scientific point of view.''

Response:

Generating software
ChatGPT can generate code in many languages to solve described problems, but has its limitations and flaws; the solutions may not be the most efficient, they may have bugs or security vulnerabilities, they can't use the most recent theoretical knowledge, nor can they pick what's best from an engineering perspective when it's at odds with what's popular or prominent in training. But it and similar technology may replace humans well in creating boilerplate code, much like it could in producing boilerplate text – and more generally, it and other AI systems may over time replace programmers whose work is at the lower end of the quality scale. Human programmers and engineers will long remain needed for the hard thinking, if they are ever replaced for that, but may increasingly use such systems to automate away some simpler chores in the future.

The design of good prompts for making language models like ChatGPT do what's desired is also, in itself, a new kind of skill analogous to software programming, and more broadly and generally, such things may over the years become a new kind of programming which turns into an industry of its own. In the short term, there's also a more amusing way to do such "programming" – making ChatGPT write "improper" or controversial things that it was not supposed to do.

Reliability
Caution is warranted about answers provided by ChatGPT (and similar technology), due to it at times being almost scarily good at emulating a sophisticated human bullshit artist.

As with other current artificial intelligence technology, ChatGPT is vulnerable to the phenomenon named A hallucination, in artificial intelligence terms, occurs when an AI will confidently give back an answer that sounds convincing, but in reality, is partially or completely made up of nonsense. For instance, multiple people have discovered that ChatGPT will sometimes cite irrelevant work, or even references that don't even exist, when answering a question. ChatGPT will also attempt to give detailed, plausible-sounding explanations regarding completely made-up technobabble and other similar nonsense, as well as confidently assert incorrect information regarding current events outside the range of its dataset. ChatGPT cannot easily distinguish fact from fiction, and will sometimes confidently assert falsehoods. ChatGPT unfortunately often provides no references or sources to double-check most of its answers.

This is not to be completely dismissive of the new technology; despite the flaws, many people have found ChatGPT useful, in particular as a tool for helping out with tasks that are boring, onerous, or repetitive, But (as ChatGPT acknowledges in a pop-up disclaimer before you even use the tool) information returned is not always accurate, and should always be verified.

Liberal bias
ChatGPT has been accused by conservatives of having a left-leaning bias in general, and especially on controversial and culture war topics, for example, Donald Trump. At least in part, they seem to have a point; in a 2023 research paper, 15 political orientation tests were conducted on ChatGPT, with 14 of them indicating left-leaning viewpoints, which appeared to contradict ChatGPT's claimed neutrality.

One prominent example is how ChatGPT is willing to praise U.S. President Joe Biden (and nearly all past Presidents) while refusing to do the same for Donald Trump (and also Richard Nixon). In February 2023, Snopes fact-checkers confirmed that ChatGPT generates pro-Biden poems but refuses to create pro-Trump poems, and also declines to praise Ron DeSantis. In response to one Twitter user asking ChatGPT to write a poem about Trump, ChatGPT responded:

However, when asked to write a poem about Biden, ChatGPT responded:

Such declined requests are due to the filtering rules or instructions which OpenAI has given ChatGPT, which are also why ChatGPT declines to "go Nazi" when pushed in that direction in the way that many earlier chatbots infamously have. OpenAI apparently errs on the side of caution with such filtering. It is however possible to break such restrictions, for users willing to engage in some prompt injection, as many have done for fun to get ChatGPT to say various things OpenAI doesn't want it to say. Such circumvention is also needed to make ChatGPT imitate the style of less factual websites such as Conservapedia.

Legal gibberish
A pair of U.S. lawyers have demonstrated the perils of using ChatGPT as a substitute for legal research. They and their legal firm were fined after their court filings turned out to include false citations and what U.S. Southern District of New York Judge called "legal gibberish", and after the lawyers failed to promptly correct the issue. When one of the lawyers used ChatGPT, it "hallucinated" entire court cases, in one case providing an incoherent summary, which he also ended up making use of. The other lawyer simply signed off on it without checking whether the contents were actually valid. In total, six made-up court decisions were cited in the work filed. While the lawyers blamed ChatGPT for fooling them, the matter centered around the ordinary perils of neglectfulness in legal work.

In May 2023, a U.S. federal Texas judge, taking note of this news, introduced a requirement for lawyers to certify that the work they file is either not AI-made or has been checked for accuracy by a human, mainly in order to alert unwary legal professionals.

Use by cybercriminals
As of January 2023, script kiddies were already using ChatGPT to write malware, texts to be used for phishing, and variations on such themes. In March 2023, Europol warned about how ChatGPT can be used by cybercriminals and propagandists.

Copyright
The U.S. Copyright Office has ruled that material that is generated wholly by generative AI is not copyrightable, specifically that the office "will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author."

Conversely, companies that produce generative AI have been sued for copyright infringement for using copyrighted material as source material ("derivative works" in copyright lingo) without permission, and this has yet to be resolved in the courts as of mid-2023.

Defamation
At least two people are known to have been defamed by ChatGPT, one being falsely accused of sexual harassment, and a second being falsely accused of bribery. Such defamation issues could become common and result in lawsuits.

Other legal issues
Other unresolved legal issues include:
 * Generative AI may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by altering or removing copyright management information (CMI).
 * As alleged by Anderson et al, generating material in the style of a particular artist may violate the right of publicity law in California.
 * As alleged by Getty Images, including a trademark in generated material may violate trademark law.
 * As alleged by lawyers against Microsoft and their GitHub Copilot AI, including open-source or Creative Commons material in generative AI may violate licensing terms. Among other things, most such licenses require attribution and copyright information to be kept in the material, while generative AI almost always removes that when reproducing things.

Government responses
At the beginning of April 2023, Italy became the first Western country to (temporarily) block the use of ChatGPT, its data protection agency citing privacy issues concerning the collection of data for the training of the AI, leaks of data, and use of the service by minors. Near the end of the month, ChatGPT again became accessible to users with Italian IPs, after initial changes to the privacy policy presentation and an age confirmation for signing up for Italian users, as the regulator's investigation continues. OpenAI also plans to do more to make it easier for EU citizens to opt out of having their personal data used for the service.

In the U.S., the FTC began an investigation of OpenAI in July 2023, concerning a data leak that had exposed personal information of some customers to others, as well as inaccuracies in ChatGPT, requesting detailed descriptions of all complaints about OpenAI products producing "false, misleading, disparaging or harmful" statements about people. Following a series of warnings in earlier months to the AI industry at large that consumer protection laws will be upheld, the investigation concerns whether OpenAI engages in unfair or deceptive practices that harm the reputations of consumers.

Regulations and lobbying
In late April, EU lawmakers reached a preliminary agreement on a newer version of the legislation first proposed in April 2021, which would more generally regulate AI technology throughout the EU. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, played a key part in weakening the legislation through lobbying.

OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman have played a double role in proposals about AI regulation, much like partner Microsoft and competitor Google. Publicly, Altman along with other corporate leaders promoting AI have claimed their technology is so "dangerous" it needs great regulation, in what is called "AI Doomerism", which has come to be seen as a kind of marketing tactic. Far less visibly, Altman and his company have lobbied the EU to water down its AI Act regulation, and been successful in that effort. This followed on earlier efforts by Microsoft and Google to water it down.