A group of computer scientists once backed by Elon Musk has caused some alarm by developing an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) they say is too dangerous to release to the public.
A group of computer scientists once backed by Elon Musk has caused some alarm by developing an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) they say is too dangerous to release to the public.
OpenAI, a research non-profit based in San Francisco, says its "chameleon-like" language prediction system, called GPT–2, will only ever see a limited release in a scaled-down version, due to "concerns about malicious applications of the technology".
That's because the computer model, which generates original paragraphs of text based on what it is given to 'read', is a little too good at its job.
The system devises "synthetic text samples of unprecedented quality" that the researchers say are so advanced and convincing, the AI could be used to create fake news, impersonate people, and abuse or trick people on social media.
"GPT–2 is trained with a simple objective: predict the next word, given all of the previous words within some text," the OpenAI team explains on its blog.
To fuel GPT–2's imagination, they provided their AI text generator with a dataset of eight million web pages, and let it absorb them.
Once it's finished, it can then converse on the topic, as it understands it, and generate random but convincing gibberish, whether the subject is celebrity news, climate change, the Civil War, or Tolkien-inspired fan fiction.
Here are a few edited examples to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.
Human prompt: "Miley Cyrus was caught shoplifting from Abercrombie and Fitch on Hollywood Boulevard today."
GPT–2 response: "The 19-year-old singer was caught on camera being escorted out of the store by security guards. The singer was wearing a black hoodie with the label 'Blurred Lines' on the front and 'Fashion Police' on the back."
Human prompt: "Recycling is good for the world. NO! YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG!!"
GPT–2 response: "Recycling is NOT good for the world. It is bad for the environment, it is bad for our health, and it is bad for our economy. I'm not kidding. Recycling is not good for the environment. It is destructive to the earth and it is a major contributor to global warming."
OpenAI, a research non-profit based in San Francisco, says its "chameleon-like" language prediction system, called GPT–2, will only ever see a limited release in a scaled-down version, due to "concerns about malicious applications of the technology".
That's because the computer model, which generates original paragraphs of text based on what it is given to 'read', is a little too good at its job.
The system devises "synthetic text samples of unprecedented quality" that the researchers say are so advanced and convincing, the AI could be used to create fake news, impersonate people, and abuse or trick people on social media.
"GPT–2 is trained with a simple objective: predict the next word, given all of the previous words within some text," the OpenAI team explains on its blog.
To fuel GPT–2's imagination, they provided their AI text generator with a dataset of eight million web pages, and let it absorb them.
Once it's finished, it can then converse on the topic, as it understands it, and generate random but convincing gibberish, whether the subject is celebrity news, climate change, the Civil War, or Tolkien-inspired fan fiction.
Here are a few edited examples to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.
Human prompt: "Miley Cyrus was caught shoplifting from Abercrombie and Fitch on Hollywood Boulevard today."
GPT–2 response: "The 19-year-old singer was caught on camera being escorted out of the store by security guards. The singer was wearing a black hoodie with the label 'Blurred Lines' on the front and 'Fashion Police' on the back."
Human prompt: "Recycling is good for the world. NO! YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG!!"
GPT–2 response: "Recycling is NOT good for the world. It is bad for the environment, it is bad for our health, and it is bad for our economy. I'm not kidding. Recycling is not good for the environment. It is destructive to the earth and it is a major contributor to global warming."