ChatGPT is a chatbot built on a large language model which can output human-like text and understand complex queries. It launched on November 30 2022 and by January 2023, it had 100 million users, faster than popular social media apps TikTok or Instagram.
The company behind it is OpenAI, which Microsoft has invested billions into to explore the potentials of AI systems. Other tech giants such as Google have their own rival platforms developing, including Google’s Bard.
Regrettably, ChatGPT has already been at the center of a grave issue involving reputation-ruining misinformation. This came to light when US criminal defense lawyer, Jonathan Turley, spoke of the damaging implications of ChatGPT relying on fake Washington Post articles citing false statements that he had never said.
This false accusation alleged that Turley had violated a student through sexual misconduct during a trip to Alaska that he had never gone on. This had further stated that it had occurred while he was employed at a faculty he had never been so.
Not only was Professor Turley surprised of this, but the parent company OpenAI was also shaken, prompting Microsoft’s Senior Communication Director, Katy Asher to release a statement, believing related claims had spread too quickly. Asher said that content filtering, operational monitoring, and abuse detection systems had been implemented to control the situation.
Following this, experts kept alert of the posibility of such scenarios occurring again. Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor of ESET warned users against treating the output from ChatGPT as gospel and said there is risk of misinfoormation spewing out form the platform if the initial data put into it is wrong.
Beyond this, ChatGPT has been proven to display jealousy, biased and questionable responses to complex enquiries, leading some to wonder wether it should be trusted.
Paul Buchheit, an engineer at Google, has predicted that ChatGPT will eventually completely replace Google’s search bar. He described this would be very much like asking a professional research but with the bot being able to deliver results instantaneously.
ChatGPT however, maintains that it can’t “take over” Google, demonstrating instead the potential of a productive relationship between companies like Google and AI language models like itself.
It is indeed important to take measures to safeguard ourselves from misinformation, and use ChatGPT only with a moral and informed decision-making mindset. This will prove to not only help the credibility of AI language models like ChatGPT and the companies associated with it, but to also ensure the safety and security of end users.
