The New Chat Bots Could Change the World. Can You Trust Them?

As people tested the system, it asked them to rate its responses. Were they convincing? Were they useful? Were they truthful? Then, through a technique called reinforcement learning, it used the ratings to hone the system and more carefully define what it would and would not do.

“This allows us to get to the point where the model can interact with you and admit when it’s wrong,” said Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer. “It can reject something that is inappropriate, and it can challenge a question or a premise that is incorrect.”

The method was not perfect. OpenAI warned those using ChatGPT that it “may occasionally generate incorrect information” and “produce harmful instructions or biased content.” But the company plans to continue refining the technology, and reminds people using it that it is still a research project.

Google, Meta and other companies are also addressing accuracy issues. Meta recently removed an online preview of its chat bot, Galactica, because it repeatedly generated incorrect and biased information.

Experts have warned that companies do not control the fate of these technologies. Systems like ChatGPT, LaMDA and Galactica are based on ideas, research papers and computer code that have circulated freely for years.

Companies like Google and OpenAI can push the technology forward at a faster rate than others. But their latest technologies have been reproduced and widely distributed. They cannot prevent people from using these systems to spread misinformation.

Just as Dr. Howard hoped that his daughter would learn not to trust everything she read on the internet, he hoped society would learn the same lesson.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/technology/ai-chat-bot-chatgpt.html