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New AI Fake Text Generator May Be Too Dangerous To Release, Say Creators (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The creators of a revolutionary AI system that can write news stories and works of fiction -- dubbed "deepfakes for text" -- have taken the unusual step of not releasing their research publicly, for fear of potential misuse. OpenAI, an nonprofit research company backed by Elon Musk, says its new AI model, called GPT2 is so good and the risk of malicious use so high that it is breaking from its normal practice of releasing the full research to the public in order to allow more time to discuss the ramifications of the technological breakthrough. At its core, GPT2 is a text generator. The AI system is fed text, anything from a few words to a whole page, and asked to write the next few sentences based on its predictions of what should come next. The system is pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible, both in terms of the quality of the output, and the wide variety of potential uses.

When used to simply generate new text, GPT2 is capable of writing plausible passages that match what it is given in both style and subject. It rarely shows any of the quirks that mark out previous AI systems, such as forgetting what it is writing about midway through a paragraph, or mangling the syntax of long sentences. Feed it the opening line of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four -- "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" -- and the system recognizes the vaguely futuristic tone and the novelistic style, and continues with: "I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."

4 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. What? by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    " "I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."

    Only a Millennial using to Twitter and Facebook would think that gibberish is even coherent.

  2. lol by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "We can't sell this in stores; it's too effective! Only special people like you can get it for 5 installments of $19.95 ... "

  3. ROFL - a complete new level of hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "this is so good we are not going to release it - honestly man, this thing is sooooo gooood, believe me, trust me on this one - soooo gooood". Followed up with an example that is a load of barely grammatically correct text extrapolated from a line of a book. Fucking read Orwell - he is communicating points with his text, it is not just grammatically correct - he is communicating ideas, often using complex language, analogies and metaphors - not just putting random words together in some "vaguely futuristic tone".

    Give me a fucking break with this AI shit. Honestly - fuck, right, off, with it.

    Musk's name is related to this? Why does that not surprise me.

  4. Re:Recreational use by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... , let it finish it, edit it a bit and have it continue from there.

    Actually, edit it a lot. From the snippets provided in TFA, there is no way this thing would pass a Turing Test. It is just well structured gibberish.

    If OpenAI wants us to believe they are really doing edgy and dangerous stuff, they need to provide better evidence than this.