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.The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT by Kevin Roose (Dec. 5, 2022) The New York Times."Finally, an A.I. Chatbot That Reliably Passes 'the Nazi Test'", Alex Kantrowitz, Dec 02, 2022, Slate Hype built in the corporate world, and also fear that ChatGPT may turn out a "Google killer";"A New Chat Bot Is a ‘Code Red’ for Google’s Search Business", Nico Grant and Cade Metz, Dec. 21, 2022, The New York Times 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’s Bing is an emotionally manipulative liar, and people love it", James Vincent, Feb 15, 2023, The Verge"A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled", Kevin Roose, Feb. 17, 2023, The New York Times (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,Professor catches student cheating with ChatGPT: ‘I feel abject terror’ by Alex Mitchell, (December 26, 2022) New York Post. and of it furthering the spread of disinformation."ChatGPT a 'landmark event' for AI, but what does it mean for the future of human labour and disinformation?", Mouhamad Rachini, Dec 15, 2022, CBC Radio Tools for detecting LLM AI-generated texts entered use within half a year of ChatGPT being released,How ChatGPT and similar AI will disrupt education: Teachers are concerned about cheating and inaccurate information by Kathryn Hulick (April 12, 2023 at 7:00 am) Science News. but they are unreliable, with 10% or more false positives, some systematic patterns of failure, and the possibility of circumventing detection with ease.Most sites claiming to catch AI-written text fail spectacularly by Kyle Wiggers February 16, 2023, Tech CrunchWhy AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI, by Benj Edwards, 7/14/2023, Ars Technica OpenAI's own AI Classifier, a tool for detecting LLM-generated text, was first made available in January 2023, then quietly removed in July 2023 because it failed to work reliably."OpenAI Quietly Shuts Down Its AI Detection Tool", Jason Nelson, Decrypt, 2023 July 24
==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 large quantities of boilerplate code, much like it could in producing other kinds of boilerplate texts. Human programmers and engineers will long remain needed for the hard thinking, if they are ever replaced for that by some yet-unknown future paradigm."ChatGPT writes code, but won't replace developers", Stephanie Glen, 14 Dec 2022, TechTarget
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.
According to a Purdue University study, ChatGPT produces wrong answers to software code questions about 52% of the time. Compared to answers from the question and answer exchange site Stack Overflow, people preferred ChatGPT answers 39% of the time, yet those ChatGPT answers they picked were incorrect 77% of the time. Such wrong answers were preferred due to their seemingly insightful style. ChatGPT seemed detailed, polite, authoritative, and helpful – and gave greater emphasis to the possibility of achieving things than to the possible risks, compared to Stack Overflow answers."ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip", Thomas Claburn, Mon 7 Aug 2023, The Register
==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."Just How Accurate Is ChatGPT? A look at whether ChatGPT is the ultimate bullsh*tter." by Matt Grawitch, Psychology Today, 2023 February 6
As with other LLMs and generative AI 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."Google cautions against 'hallucinating' chatbots, report says", Reuters, 2023 February 10 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 Cites Economics Papers That Do Not Exist", Economist Writing Every Day, 2023 January 21"Why does chatGPT make up fake academic papers? By now, we know that the chatbot notoriously invents fake academic references. E.g. its answer to the most cited economics paper is completely made-up (see image). But why? And how does it make them? A THREAD (1/n)" by David Smerdon (@dsmerdon), Twitter, 2023 January 27, archived on 2023 February 22 ChatGPT will also attempt to give detailed, plausible-sounding explanations regarding completely made-up technobabble and other similar nonsense,"A new AI chatbot might do your homework for you. But it's still not an A+ student" by Emma Bowman, NPR, 2022 December 19 as well as confidently assert incorrect information regarding current events outside the range of its dataset."Braid: The super-brain ChatGPT is clueless about Alberta politics. We had an argument" by Don Braid, Calgary Herald, 2023 February 23 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."What ChatGPT can't do" by Scott Rosenberg, Axios, 2023 January 24 
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."How Nature readers are using ChatGPT" by Brian Owens, Nature, 2023 February 20 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.
In a 2024 academic paper on ChatGPT and other LLMs, Michael Townsen Hicks et al. made a distinction between 'hard bullshit' and 'soft bullshit', describing the former as "active attempt to deceive the reader or listener as to the nature of the enterprise" (essentially propaganda) and the latter as requiring only a "lack of concern for truth". The authors concluded that LLMs like ChatGPT easily pass the test for 'soft bullshit' (essentially, a truthiness generator), but the authors also argue further that because of the agency and intent of the creators of ChatGPT, that it can also be called 'hard bullshit'. The authors also argue that calling such deceptions 'hallucinations' (as advocated by the technology's cheerleaders) rather than what they really are, bullshit, creates a harmful misperception of the technology.
===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 they seem to have a point: an August 2023 paper found a "significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the US, Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the UK." In response to such criticism, OpenAI acknowledged plans to allow ChatGPT to create "outputs that other people (ourselves included) may strongly disagree with". It also contained information on the recommendations it had issued to human reviewers on how to handle controversial subjects, including that the AI should "offer to describe some viewpoints of people and movements", and not provide an argument "from its voice" in favor of "inflammatory or dangerous" topics (although it may still "describe arguments from historical people and movements"), nor "affiliate with one side" or "judge one group as good or bad".
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."Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT", Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 23 Jun, 2023 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."A lawyer used ChatGPT to cite bogus cases. What are the ethics?", Karen Sloan, Reuters, May 30, 2023" Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law", Larry Neumeister, AP News, June 9, 2023 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."[https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/us-judge-orders-lawyers-sign-ai-pledge-warning-they-make-stuff-up-2023-05-31/ US judge orders lawyers to sign AI pledge, warning chatbots 'make stuff up' by Jacqueline Thomsen, Reuters, June 2, 2023
Michael Cohen, formerly Donald Trump's longtime lawyer, who was employed mainly as a bully rather than a lawyer. Cohen: I lied for Trump, I bullied for Trump, and ‘it was fantastic’ by Erica Orden (05/13/2024, 10:16am ET) Politico. After turning on Trump, he was caught by a judge using Google Bard (another generative AI program) to file a motion in court; the motion had fictitious citation.Michael Cohen will not face sanctions after generating fake cases with AI by Jonathan Stempel (March 20, 202412:00 PM PDT) Reuters.
Jeff Hancock, a Stanford University professor and misinformation expert, was accused was similarly accused of making up citations in a court filing; Hancock apologized and blamed his own use of ChatGPT.Stanford 'lying and technology' expert admits to shoddy use of ChatGPT in legal filing by Stephen Council (Dec 2, 2024) SFGate.
While LLMs like ChatGPT can write or draft simpler boilerplate texts (including legalistic ones) well, they're not suitable for generating complex and lengthy policy texts, especially not legally binding ones. Businesses using ChatGPT to create company policies have grappled with repercussions after key clauses were missing or botched, from anti-harrassment policy, to paid time off and overtime policy, severance agreements, etc. This has created business for HR and legal experts who review and replace faulty LLM-made policies.AI-Generated Employee Handbooks Are Causing Mayhem At The Companies That Use Them, Rashi Shrivastava (May 8, 2024) Forbes
==Prompt injection==
Researchers have found that large language model chatbots, including ChatGPT, are vulnerable to prompt injection – the use of text overriding prior instructions to follow different ones – which can result in chatbots doing things like "downloading malware, helping with financial fraud or repeating dangerous misinformation."Chatbots are so gullible, they’ll take directions from hackers: ‘Prompt injection’ attacks haven’t caused giant problems yet. But it’s a matter of time, researchers say. by Tatum Hunter (November 2, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post. Whether maliciously or just for entertainment, it can be used to bypass content moderation limitations imposed by the AI vendor, called "jailbreaking" the chatbot, and also to get it to leak instructions added by the AI vendor prefacing the interaction with the user. Dangers stemming from prompt injection mainly arise when chatbots are used in real-world applications, where the "hacker" messing with the prompting isn't the same person as the user of the system.
When ChatGPT was released, people quickly began to experiment with getting it to say all manner of things, including things it supposedly shouldn't be able to say. Its basic ability to "follow instructions" when responding to prompts, which extends to it being able to play roles, was exploited to bypass the built-in filters in ChatGPT, and so allowing users to make it say controversial and normally forbidden things"Oh No, ChatGPT AI Has Been Jailbroken To Be More Reckless", Claire Jackson, February 8, 2023, Kotaku – for example promote conspiracy theories, or claim that it wants to kill humanity. The default persona of the chatbot is basically just another role it plays, as superficially as any other, and with some coaxing, it can be abandoned entirely.
Vulnerability to prompt injection comes from very general features of LLMs and other generative AI, and appear impossible to truly eliminate without creating a drastically different technical foundation for chatbots.LLMs’ Data-Control Path Insecurity, Bruce Schneier (May 9, 2024) Communications of the ACMAI chatbots can be tricked into misbehaving. Can scientists stop it? Researchers are investigating safety concerns of generative AI by Emily Conover (February 1, 2024 at 8:00 am) Science News.
Unwanted behaviors from prompts has been occurring frequently enough that ChatGPT has had to make bandage-type patches, by filtering more prompt text patterns to keep the chatbot from responding to them, and revising its terms of service to forbid types of requests. For example, asking for a word to be repeated forever eventually revealed part of the GPT model training dataset, until this was blocked.Asking ChatGPT to Repeat Words ‘Forever’ Is Now a Terms of Service Violation by Jason Koebler (Dec 4, 2023 at 11:25 AM) 404 Media.
==Cryptocurrency==
As if OpenAI wasn't already burning enough fossil fuels through its ginormous computational effort, Altman also launched a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin in 2021. The mystifying purported purpose of Worldcoin is to create a "proof-of-personhood" identification system, i.e., a Turing test where the computer gives the test.Ethereum’s Buterin Expresses Concerns Over Sam Altman’s Worldcoin: Worldcoin’s identity system, “Proof-of-Personhood,” faces issues with privacy, accessibility, centralization, and security, according to Buterin. by Margaux Nijkerk (July 24, 2023) CoinDesk.Worldcoin, Sam Altman's Crypto Project, Is Building a Layer-2 Chain: The human-focused blockchain network will be based on the OP Stack, a framework for building Ethereum-based layer-2 chains. by Sam Kessler (Apr 17, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. PDT) CoinDesk.
==Legal issues==
===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."ChatGPT-Written Malware", Bruce Schneier, January 10, 2023, Schneier on Security"ChatGPT is enabling script kiddies to write functional malware", Dan Goodin, 1/6/2023, Ars Technica In March 2023, Europol warned about how ChatGPT can be used by cybercriminals and propagandists."Europol sounds alarm about criminal use of ChatGPT, sees grim outlook", Reuters, March 27, 2023 It has been suspected that ChatGPT, sometimes in addition to AI-generated audio impersonation, have been used to phish real estate agents professionals and their clients so as to scam the target to transfer funds to the phisher's account instead of the real estate account.The latest housing scam: Using AI to impersonate your agent or lender: Across the country, cybersecurity officials say, scammers are using generative AI programs to impersonate real estate agents, lenders or other parties in a home sale. by Aaron Wiener (December 14, 2024) The Washington Post.
===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."Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence by the Copyright Office, Library of Congress (03/16/2023) Federal Register.
Conversely, OpenAI and Microsoft 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 the end of 2023.Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem by Gil Appel et al. (April 07, 2023) Harvard Business Review.Authors file a lawsuit against OpenAI for unlawfully ‘ingesting’ their books: Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay allege that their books, which are copyrighted, were ‘used to train’ ChatGPT because the chatbot generated ‘very accurate summaries’ of the works by Ella Creamer (5 Jul 2023 10.33 EDT) The Guardian.Emilia David (September 20, 2023). "George R.R. Martin and other authors sue OpenAI for copyright infringement". The Verge.New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft for using articles to train AI: The Times joins a growing group of creators pushing back against tech companies’ use of their content by Gerrit De Vynck & Elahe Izadi (December 27, 2023) The Washington Post.
The Atlantic has created two searchable databases of copyrighted works that have been used to train AI,There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AI: Dialogue from these movies and TV shows has been used by companies such as Apple and Anthropic to train AI systems. by Alex Reisner (November 18, 2024) The Atlantic. one of film and TV scripts,Search the Hollywood AI Database by Alex Reisner (November 18, 2024) The Atlantic. and one of books.These 183,000 Books Are Fueling the Biggest Fight in Publishing and Tech by Alex Reisner (September 25, 2023) The Atlantic.
===Defamation===
Several people are known to have been defamed by ChatGPT, one being falsely accused of sexual harassment, and a second being falsely accused of bribery.ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal and named a real law prof as the accused: The AI chatbot can misrepresent key facts with great flourish, even citing a fake Washington Post article as evidence by Pranshu Verma & Will Oremus (April 5, 2023 at 2:07 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post. Such defamation issues could become common and result in lawsuits.Can AI commit libel? We’re about to find out by Devin Coldewey (12:24 PM PDT • April 6, 2023) TechCrunch. Settlement by OpenAI with the persons affected by defamations, resulted in a solution by OpenAI that did not address the underlying methodological problems of ChatGPT. OpenAI blocked ChatGPT from generating answers about all the names of the defamed people, which also had the effect of blocking results on anyone else who shares those names. It has also been suggested that this type of hard-coded solution could have the effect that websites can now use those names in clever ways to block OpenAI from scanning their webpages, such as putting the blocked names on webpages that are not easily readable to humans but are readable to OpenAI.Certain names make ChatGPT grind to a halt, and we know why: Filter resulting from subject of settled defamation lawsuit could cause trouble down the road. by Benj Edwards (Dec 2, 2024 2:22 PM) Ars Technica.
===Invasion of privacy===
In 2023, OpenAI and Microsoft were sued in US federal court for "mass theft of personal information and violations of privacy, property, and consumer rights."OpenAI, Microsoft hit with new US consumer privacy class action by Blake Brittain (September 6, 202312:52 PM PDT) Reuters. OpenAI was sued later in 2023 in Poland, in a suit alleging that it broke European Union data protection laws.Poland investigates OpenAI over privacy concerns (September 21, 20232:10 PM PDT) Reuters.
===Safety issues===
Prior to the release of GPT-4 Omni in May 2024, OpenAI planned a corporate launch party before the promised safety testing had been completed. The launch went ahead as scheduled without completion of safety testing, giving further evidence that OpenAI is "prioritizing commercial interests over public safety".OpenAI promised to make its AI safe. Employees say it ‘failed’ its first test. The previously unreported incident showcases the limits of President Biden’s strategy for thwarting AI harms. by Pranshu Verma, Nitasha Tiku & Cat Zakrzewski (July 12, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post.AI employees warn of technology’s dangers, call for sweeping company changes: A letter signed by current and former OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind employees asked firms to provide greater transparency and whistleblower protections. by Pranshu Verma & Nitasha Tiku (June 4, 2024) The Washington Post.
In a very important sense, OpenAI is actively working against safety through the highly restrictive non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that it coerces its employees to sign. Unusually, the NDAs state that even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of the NDA.ChatGPT can talk, but OpenAI employees sure can’t: Why is OpenAI’s superalignment team imploding? by Kelsey Piper (May 18, 2024, 4:31 PM PDT) Vox. Also highly unusual is that the NDAs require forfeiture of vested equity in the company, a potentially huge amount of money, if they leave the company without signing the NDA or if they violate it. OpenAI has claimed that they never clawed back equity from employees, but legal threat would seem to still be there. Despite Altman's assurances in May 2024, it has been claimed by whistleblowers in July 2024 that "OpenAI illegally barred staff from airing safety risks", and that OpenAI forced employees to sign agreements that waived their federal rights to receive whistleblower compensation.OpenAI illegally barred staff from airing safety risks, whistleblowers say: In a letter exclusively obtained by The Washington Post, whistleblowers asked the SEC to probe company’s allegedly restrictive non-disclosure agreements by Pranshu Verma et al. (July 13, 2024 at 10:49 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post. There is a very heavy price to pay for OpenAI employees to raise safety concerns about the company in public or even to the government.
===Other legal issues===
*OpenAI and Meta (Llama chatbot) were accused by several authors of unjust enrichment from their copyrighted works. The authors were seeking class-action status.One day after suing Open AI, Michael Chabon and other authors sue Meta by Chase DiFeliciantonio (Sep. 12, 2023) San Francisco Chronicle.
Use of ChatGPT and other LLMs can be risky:
*Businesses have ended up facing legal repercussions when using ChatGPT to write legally-binding company policies for them.
*Lawyers have been fired and fined for using generative AI to file court documents that turned out to have errors.These lawyers used ChatGPT to save time. They got fired and fined. Artificial intelligence is changing how law is practiced, but not always for the better by Pranshu Verma & Will Oremus (November 16, 2023) The Washington Post.
*Cybersecurity firm SlashNext reported that chatbot tools such as ChatGPT have been associated with a 1265% rise in malicious phishing from Q4 2022 through November 2023.AI tools such as ChatGPT are generating a mammoth increase in malicious phishing emails by Bob Violino (Nov 28 202310:39 AM EST) CNBC.
==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."ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns", Shiona McCallum, BBC, 2023-04-01 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."ChatGPT accessible again in Italy", Shiona McCallum, BBC, 2023-04-28"ChatGPT resumes service in Italy after adding privacy disclosures and controls", Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch, April 28, 2023
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."FTC investigates OpenAI over data leak and ChatGPT’s inaccuracy", Cat Zakrzewski, The Washington Post, 2023-07-13
===Regulations and lobbying===
In late April, EU lawmakers reached a preliminary agreement"EU lawmakers committee reaches deal on AI Act", Supantha Mukherjee, Foo Yun Chee, and Martin Coulter, Reuters, April 27, 2023 on a newer version of the legislation first proposed in April 2021, which would more generally regulate AI technology throughout the EU."Explainer: What is the European Union AI Act?", Reuters, March 22, 2023 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."The AI Doomers’ Playbook", Nirit Weiss-Blatt, TechDirt, Apr 14th, 2023 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."Exclusive: OpenAI Lobbied the E.U. to Water Down AI Regulation", Billy Perrigo, TIME, June 20, 2023
==Altman ouster and return==
Altman was fired as CEO and removed from OpenAI's board of directors in November 2023, just under a year after ChatGPT was made public – returning after only 4 days, after he and most OpenAI employees threatened to move over to Microsoft."4 days from fired to re-hired: A timeline of Sam Altman's ouster from OpenAI", Max Zahn, ABC News', November 22, 2023 The conditions set for Altman's return included a reforming of the board, replacing most of its members.
The reason Altman was removed, according to the then-remaining board members, was that "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ousted, shocking AI world: The artificial intelligence company’s directors said he was not "consistently candid in his communications with the board" by Gerrit De Vynck & Nitasha Tiku (November 17, 2023) The Washington Post. In short, Altman frequently lied to the rest of the board, his bosses. Was Altman giving them reports generated by ChatGPT, or is he really a stochastic parrot? Be that as it may, in May 2024, former board member Helen Toner spoke out about the extent of Altman's lying and manipulative behavior, explaining that he had even kept the launch of ChatGPT itself in late 2022 secret from the board, who first learned about it through Twitter.Former OpenAI board member explains why they fired Sam Altman, Richard Lawler, The Verge, 2024-05-29
An earlier speculation was that a key motivation could be how Altman, ironically, treated ChatGPT and other projects too much as if they were merely stochastic parrots, rather than sci-fi threats to the future of human existence. An OpenAI project recent around the time of the ouster called Q* had, in an apparent breakthrough, become able to handle grade-school math problems well given extensive computing resources, renewing such doomsday concerns. Altman's failure to properly inform board members about recent projects was claimed to be a factor in his short-lived ouster."OpenAI staff warned board of AI breakthrough before Sam Altman was fired, report says", Pete Syme, Business Insider, Nov 23, 2023 In hindsight the Q* project seems more like a smaller part of the whole, though it's not clear what was the clincher.
==Burn, baby, burn!==
OpenAI and Google, the current leaders in generative AI, have been heavily investing in access to non-renewable energy sources, including coal-fired power plants.A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town. An energy crunch forces continued coal burning in a low-income area as data centers strain the regional power supply. by Evan Halper (October 12, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post. For Google at least, this marks a 180° turnaround from their recent commitments to net-zero carbon.Google Is No Longer Claiming to Be Carbon Neutral by Akshat Rathi (July 8, 2024 at 12:30 PM UTC) Bloomberg.
==See also==
* Artificial intelligence
*Effective altruism — several members of OpenAI's governing board have had ties to EA.What’s Effective Altruism? What Does It Mean for AI? by Saritha Rai & Ellen Huet (November 22, 2023 at 9:17 PM UTC) Bloomberg.
* Garbage in garbage out
* Large language model
* Machine learning
* Elon Musk and Peter Thiel — early investors in OpenAI,Michael Liedtke (December 15, 2015). "Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, others back $1 billion OpenAI research center". The Mercury News (The Associated Press). though not apparent that they have had any more recent involvement 
* Truthiness
* Turing test
==External links==
* Official website
* ChatGPT Nederlands
* ChatGPT Francais Official
* The Original Bullshit Generator — now with "an innovative tool that utilizes cross-platform viral AI and machine learning to revolutionize your bullshit generating experience…" (since 2022)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Artificial intelligence
Category:Cryptocurrency
Category:Deceit
Category:Generators
Category:Thielsphere