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> "I think this is a pretty stark wake-up call. The system is portrayed as being credible and informative and authoritative, and it's obviously not."

Except it was never claimed to be any of those things. In fact they have a bunch of disclaimers warning users the exact opposite.

Still, it will be interesting to see the outcome of this case. In today's age of misinformation, such disclaimers may not be sufficient. And AI's are developing the ability to be "confidently wrong" in ways that will become increasingly convincing & subtle over time.



>Except it was never claimed to be any of those things.

Not by its inventors, but by its management-type evangelists. Which do you think the mayor had in his ear?


Conisdering the people I know that use ChatGPT to summerize SEC filings for them, I think those disclaimers are mostly ignored.


summarizing is different from generating and different from searching


It isn't guaranteed to be accurate for any of these cases, so the difference is irrelevant here.


Could you remind me what the "G" in "GPT" means?


Wow!, do you know what the Ms in 3M mean?


I do, as it happens. But your snippy response isn't responsive to the core of the concept to which my question referred.

"Pulling in a chunk of content and probabilistically summarizing it is somehow not generative work" does not make pass the sniff test. And "probabilistically" is load-bearing there: you are reliant on probabilistic weights to not have that generated summary turn out to be hogwash.


summarize a given text is a valid task for this tool.


Considering the results, in that case, is at least negligent.


In fact they have a bunch of disclaimers warning users the exact opposite.

Maybe buried in the fine print somewhere.

Its own splash page, however, paints much more of a "what's not to like?" picture:

We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

Or in one of its "customer stories", it boast of how GPT-4 can act as "essentially the most knowledgeable person in your company":

“You essentially have the knowledge of the most knowledgeable person in Wealth Management—instantly”, McMillan adds. “Think of it as having our Chief Investment Strategist, Chief Global Economist, Global Equities Strategist, and every other analyst around the globe on call for every advisor, every day. We believe that is a transformative capability for our company.”

This sure sounds asymptotically close to "[portraying] the system as being credible and informative and authoritative", per the parent comment.


It’s about equivalent to calling a driving assist “Autopilot” and then screaming “they should have read the fine print!!!” when it kills people who thought it was autopilot.


When you sign up and every time you log in on a new device it shows you popup that takes over the whole page where you need to click "Next" 3 times. That's not small print buried away somewhere.

I just signed in with an incognito tab to see the popup again

https://imgur.com/EbSafWr


As with tobacco companies that of course have warning labels in all the legally mandated places -- yet still run zillions of ads showing what a youthful, vibrant, carefree lifestyle their product enables -- it's plain to see the real message they intend to get across.

That is to say: the "higher truth" that they want their customers to walk away with.


Disclaimers are not a guaranteed release from liability.

Especially in the case of libel/defamation law, and especially in the UK and Australia, where even true statements can get you in trouble, putting up a disclaimer may not give you any protection at all.


There's already case law showing labeling a novel fiction is not necessarily enough to protect yourself from losing at defamation litigation.


Well, that seems ridiculous, but I'd be curious to find the actual case.


Is it really that ridiculous? If someone writes a novel with an extremely detailed and believable backdrop full of real famous people people and detailed descriptions of actual events which also happens to include some salacious allegations about one of those famous people, and readers generally believe that salacious allegation is one of the bits of the backdrop to the story which actually happened, is that any less harmful to that person's reputation than a tweet?


> Except it was never claimed to be any of those things.

Not true. Yes it was specifically claimed to be, by Bing (and I don't see on Bing any link to OpenAI's TOU):

https://www.bing.com/ the new Bing, your AI-powered copilot for the web.

https://www.bing.com/new :

> Introducing the new Bing: Ask real questions. Get complete answers. Chat and create.

> Ask anything. Ask your questions – short, long or anything in between. The more precise you ask, the better the answer.

> ... Answers are just the beginning: The new Bing offers you reliable, up-to-date results – and complete answers to your questions. Of course, it also cites the sources.

Clearly claims it gives complete, precise, reliable answers to questions. There are absolutely no disclaimers on either of those pages about accuracy or "for entertainment purposes only". The only thing is a link to the terms of use which largely contradicts what the front pages are clearly marketing it as:

https://www.bing.com/new/termsofuse

and even then you have to hunt, buried below-the-fold on screen 3/4, for the weaselly language:

> 9. No Guarantees; No Representations or Warranties; Indemnification by You. We plan to continue to develop and improve the Online Services, but we make no guarantees or promises about how the Online Services operate or that they will function as intended. The Online Services are for entertainment purposes; the Online Services are not error-free, may not work as expected and may generate incorrect information. You should not rely on the Online Services and you should not use the Online Services for advice of any kind. Your use of the Online Services is at your own risk

For example, to a layman "this service is not error-free" would be be understood as merely "the server might occasionally crash/ hang/ timeout", not "the AI may randomly fabricate completely untrue and fictitious, yet plausible-looking, claimed facts. Do not trust a word it outputs".

(The gap will be totally blurred once there's a feedback-loop where web content written by GPT (in any jurisdiction) gets reindexed by Bing(/Google) then relied on as fact, without attribution or disclaimer. From content-farms to libel-farms, disinformation-farms, reputation-laundering-farms, election-influencing farms... so many possibilities. And people could pick the most permissive jurisdiction to host such content in.)

> Still, it will be interesting to see the outcome of this case.

For sure. And remember, any court case would likely be in an Australian court under Australian law with Australian penalties. I do not believe the above TOU trickery (arguing that precise, yet totally false, answers are 'reliable'... 'complete answers' to user questions) will fly in Australian court.


The article doesn't say they used Bing. It says ChatGPT.


(But that could have been ChatGPT directly, or via Bing, or other API.) You're correct, I misread the article, it says directly from OpenAI. Its last paragraph says Bing does not have the misinformation:

> Different chatbots, different answers

> The BBC was able to confirm Mr Hood's claims by asking the publicly available version of ChatGPT on OpenAI's website about the role he had in the Securency scandal.

> ... But the same (incorrect) result does not appear in the newer version of ChatGPT which is integrated into Microsoft's Bing search engine.

> It correctly identifies him as a whistleblower, and specifically says he "was not involved in the payment of bribes... as claimed by an AI chatbot called ChatGPT".




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