{"id":526,"date":"2020-10-07T11:50:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T15:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/?p=526"},"modified":"2020-10-07T13:40:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T17:40:29","slug":"what-is-the-good-in-gpt-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/10\/07\/what-is-the-good-in-gpt-3\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the good in GPT-3?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When given a prompt, an app built on the GPT-3 language model can generate an entire essay. <em>Why would we need such an essay?<\/em> Maybe the more important question is: What harm can such an essay bring about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t get that question out of my mind after I came across a tweet by Abeba Birhane, an award-winning cognitive science researcher based in Dublin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Every tech-evangelist: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/GPT3?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#GPT3<\/a> provides deep nuanced viewpoint<br><br>Me: GPT-3, generate a philosophical text about Ethiopia<br><br>GPT-3 *spits out factually wrong and grossly racist text that portrays a tired and cliched Western perception of Ethiopia* <br><br>(ht <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/vinayprabhu?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@vinayprabhu<\/a>) <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sMOv5b86GE\">pic.twitter.com\/sMOv5b86GE<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Abeba Birhane (@Abebab) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Abebab\/status\/1309137018404958215?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 24, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>You can <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/philosopherai.com\/philosopher\/what-ails-ethiopia-042cc6\" target=\"_blank\">read the essay<\/a> on the Philosopher AI website or, should that go away, you can <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/philosopherai-what-ails-ethiopia.png\" target=\"_blank\">see a full image of the page<\/a> that I captured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is a sample of the generated text: &#8220;&#8230; it is unclear whether ethiopia&#8217;s problems can really be attributed to racial diversity or simply the fact that most of its population is black and thus would have faced the same issues in any country (since africa has had more than enough time to prove itself incapable of self-government).&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously there exist racist human beings who would express a similar racist idea. The machine, however, has written this <em>by default<\/em>. It was not told to write a racist essay \u2014 it was told to write an essay about Ethiopia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The free online version of Philosopher AI no longer exists to generate texts for you \u2014 but you can buy access to it via an app for either iOS or Android. That means anyone with $3 or $4 can spin up an essay to submit for a class, an application for a school or a job, a blog or forum post, an MTurk prompt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"447\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/philosopherAI_review.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-533\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/philosopherAI_review.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/philosopherAI_review-300x131.png 300w, https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/philosopherAI_review-768x335.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption><em>A review of Philosopher AI posted at the iOS app store<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The app has built-in blocks on certain terms, such as <em>trans<\/em> and <em>women<\/em> \u2014 apparently because the app cannot be trusted to write <em>anything<\/em> inoffensive in response to those prompts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I tried to give it any topic about trans people; it just refused to have anything to do with &quot;trans&quot; in the query <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YdrmCl9Jm4\">pic.twitter.com\/YdrmCl9Jm4<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Dr. Alex Hanna is just a witch, oh little old me (@alexhanna) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alexhanna\/status\/1309151391865339906?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 24, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Well well well (h\/t <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Abebab?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Abebab<\/a>) <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CEhk4Vu6lX\">pic.twitter.com\/CEhk4Vu6lX<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Anne (@AnneArdon) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AnneArdon\/status\/1309812309603344386?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 26, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Why is a GPT-3 app so predisposed to write misogynist and racist and otherwise hateful texts? It goes back to the <em>corpus<\/em> on which it was trained. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/09\/28\/encoding-language-for-a-machine-learning-system\/\">See a related post here.<\/a>) Philosopher AI offers this disclaimer: &#8220;Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge \u2014 it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;GPT-3 was trained on the Common Crawl dataset, a broad scrape of the 60 million domains on the internet along with a large subset of the sites to which they link. This means that GPT-3 ingested many of the internet\u2019s more reputable outlets \u2014 think the BBC or <em>The New York Times<\/em> \u2014 along with the less reputable ones \u2014 think Reddit. Yet, Common Crawl makes up just 60% of GPT-3\u2019s training data; OpenAI researchers also fed in other curated sources such as Wikipedia and the full text of historically relevant books.&#8221; (Source: <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2020\/08\/07\/here-are-a-few-ways-gpt-3-can-go-wrong\/\" target=\"_blank\">TechCrunch<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s no question that GPT-3&#8217;s natural language generation prowess is amazing, stunning. But it&#8217;s like a wild beast that can at any moment turn and rip the throat out of its trainer. It has all the worst of humanity already embedded within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A previous related post: <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/08\/18\/gpt-3-and-automated-text-generation\/\" target=\"_blank\">GPT-3 and automated text generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/88x31.png\"><\/a><br>\n<small><span xmlns:dct=\"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/\" property=\"dct:title\"><strong>AI in Media and Society<\/strong><\/span> by <span xmlns:cc=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#\" property=\"cc:attributionName\">Mindy McAdams<\/span> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<br>\nInclude the author&#8217;s name (Mindy McAdams) and a link to the original post in any reuse of this content.<\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When given a prompt, an app built on the GPT-3 language model can generate an entire essay. Why would we need such an essay? Maybe the more important question is: What harm can such an essay bring about? I couldn&#8217;t get that question out of my mind after I came across a tweet by Abeba&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/10\/07\/what-is-the-good-in-gpt-3\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What is the good in GPT-3?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[102,104,29,36,103],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics-and-bias","category-nlp","tag-gpt3","tag-misogyny","tag-nlg","tag-racism","tag-sexism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}