Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."
I imagine that, if distilled down to a usable script, it could make for an interesting "faux-writing" hobby where you write a few ideas, let it finish it, edit it a bit and have it continue from there. Could make for some interesting works of fiction.
They say they don't need it. What they've been doing is working just fine.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
" "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.
"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 ... "
"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.
"We can't release it, it's too powerful!" sounds like a cheap way to drum up free publicity, implying groundbreaking results without having to actually deliver anything. That is it would sound like that, except Elon Musk is involved, and we know he would never do something so crass and dishonest for publicity.
Have it write a day worth of Slashdot style stories, and associated responses - then let us compare a day of Slashdot to this supposedly dangerous bot.
Or maybe just let the bot write all front page articles for Slashdot on April 1st and so how it does. Can't be any worse than what we already get.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"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."
Yeah, the part where a teacher in rural China gets in (his/her) car to drive to their new job in Seattle is a bit of a stretch.
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...
"Rarely"? It forgot what it was writing about after the first sentence. First it's in Seattle, then it's in China (but not in any particular part-- in "some school"). It's a hundred years from now, then in the next sentence it's 2045, 26 years from now. The narrator is in the car, then puts gas in (hard to do in that order). The first sentence tells me what the day is like ("It was a bright cold day in April"), and then the paragraph ends "I just imagined what the day would be like".
No two sentences seem to be talking about the same thing.
The poor computer is just spitting out words, and clearly doesn't know what they mean.
"I was in my TESLA on my way to a new job in Muskville. I put the Cryptocurrency in, had my AI ID chip in my brain verified, and then just let the Level 3 Autopilot drive. I just imagined what the day would be like without Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company - terrible. A hundred years from now, in a multiplanetary world. In 2045 I was on a 'torture tourism tour' in a poor rural part of New China - the Communist planet, not the still-Communist country. I took great delight in torturing natives who didn't accept the Chinese history and history of science they had been taught."
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
OpenAI, an nonprofit research company backed by Elon Musk
It turns out that the "Going private. Funding secured" tweet was a unit test which got away from them.
Joke's on you. I turned my Slashdot account over to a deep-fake AI back in 2013 and still got voted the most beloved commenter on the site.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm not sure why they selected that snippet of text as their prime example when the made up story about Brexit and the continued prose from Pride and Prejudice from the included video were both more impressive.
That said, I don't see why they think it's so dangerous that they need to keep it secret. People already know that everything that not everything they hear on the Internet is true (or if they do, they're already too far gone!).
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.
Have you read my blog lately?