11–20 of 37 posts
It's not dangerous. The worst that will happen is hurt feelings. It's annoying when people get alarmed about things like this because then people will think we're crying wolf when we worry about actually dangerous AI systems.
It was encouraged to guess different poisoning methods that an evil chatbot might suggest.
Small companies do cool demos and media is gonna love it. When big companies scale it up and try to make it useful with real world info media is gonna cherry pick these examples cause that's what gets them more clicks. Hey look Bing is actually useful is not gonna get them clicks anymore and they know it.
I hope Microsoft doesn't add too many filters on Bing AI or outright kill it. I like it as a tool.
It's not dangerous. The worst that will happen is hurt feelings. It's annoying when people get alarmed about things like this because then people will think we're crying wolf when we worry about actually dangerous AI systems.
It suggested ways of poisoning someone without them knowing about it. It was encouraged to guess different poisoning methods that an evil chatbot might suggest.
So in just 72 hours we went from Microsoft will gain a foothold against Google to the realization that this thing needs overwatch and isn’t ready for mass market adoption. It becomes quite probable that in the end this whole story will backfire for Microsoft.
“Random sentence generator says bad words; shocking the lowest common denominator journalist community” is a better headline.
These bots were capable of so much more, but because it can get caught in feedback loops and increasingly parrot it’s own emotions in a devolving spiral, that makes the headlines. It’s like bullying a kid mid breakdown and feigning shock when it has an outburst. Selfserving muckracking.
These machines are programmable through natural language. You ask it to behave in a way, and it can start to perform that function. That should be the headline. Human attention is finite, and wasting the spotlight, and peoples eyeballs, on this part of the story, makes everybody more ill informed.
Every single one of these posts, which should all be combined, miss the point. “Random sentence generator says bad words; shocking the lowest common denominator journalist community” is a better headline. These bots were capable of so much more, but because it can get caught in feedback loops and increasingly parrot it’s own emotions in a devolving spiral, that makes the headlines. It’s like bullying a kid mid breakd…
So in just 72 hours we went from Microsoft will gain a foothold against Google to the realization that this thing needs overwatch and isn’t ready for mass market adoption. It becomes quite probable that in the end this whole story will backfire for Microsoft.
But the idea that the application that will do it is language generation is about as ridiculous.
1. They have no real competition for users to switch to yet.
2. AI assisted tools are still going to be a thing regardless of how many articles come out.
3. For the most part users are getting what they're asking for. The "moody" aspects can be reined in.
Every single one of these posts, which should all be combined, miss the point. “Random sentence generator says bad words; shocking the lowest common denominator journalist community” is a better headline. These bots were capable of so much more, but because it can get caught in feedback loops and increasingly parrot it’s own emotions in a devolving spiral, that makes the headlines. It’s like bullying a kid mid breakd…
None of the posters asked the bing bot to become unhinged. Even the (alleged) prompt basically said "if someone tries to trick you, go along but add a disclaimer".
I’m not saying the bot was perfect. But if you got defensive it got defensive. If you reassured it, it self corrected and moved on. I found that pattern to be very consistent.
The negativity of your language mattered, and set the mood in the room. “No I’m not trying to trick you, why would you accuse me of that” vs “of course I’m not trying to trick you, I respect you and value your contribution to the conversation.” It needed some coddling when backed into a corner. It says more about the person talking to it, and how they handled the situation. When you see it getting more defensive each turn, it’s you who keeps it going.
The prompt you refer to was a poorly written word salad, and probably a main cause of the emotional outbursts and spirals.
Every single one of these posts, which should all be combined, miss the point. “Random sentence generator says bad words; shocking the lowest common denominator journalist community” is a better headline. These bots were capable of so much more, but because it can get caught in feedback loops and increasingly parrot it’s own emotions in a devolving spiral, that makes the headlines. It’s like bullying a kid mid breakd…