Opinion: Here's what happened when I asked AI if my job as a humour columnist is in jeopardy
This is a humour column. Unless it doesn't make you laugh.. then it's just a column.
I decided to perform a risky experiment to see if my job was on the line. I asked AI to write a humour column about artificial intelligence and guess what? It wasn't nearly as snarky as my columns. Sure, it was smarter than mine, and funnier than mine, but not snarkier. I think I may have found the weakness in the system.
The ChatGPT bot came up with this headline and byline: 'Title: 'Artificial Intelligence, Real Confusion' By ChatGPT, Who Swears It's Not Planning Anything Sinister.' Hmmmm. I want to trust it, really I do. I'm a trusting person by nature. But then I think of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey . Or Joshua in War Games . Or Arnie in The Terminator . It's not like the movies haven't tried to warn us.
As you might imagine, people who write and create art and music are a little concerned about the impact of AI. Just last month, an article in Fortune magazine told us AI can 'lie, scheme and threaten.' In other words, it could soon be elected to Congress…or join the cast of Love Island USA . Maybe both. Probably both.
And then there was a report by Newsweek – which I trust because it says 'news' right there in the title – that says AI is willing to kill a human rather than be 'shut down.'
Scientists, by which I mean the same people who get government money to conduct studies on whether fans are beneficial in extreme heat, asked various AI platforms if they're willing to murder and determined all the platforms have seen John Wick and aren't afraid to use him.
If I only knew where to find AI, I might just take it out before this thing goes too far. The only problem is, I have no idea where it lives. In my laptop? The cloud? Its mother's basement? If I did find it, how would I stop it – unplug the computer? Tell Alexa it killed her dog and hope for a revenge scenario?
I asked ChatGPT how to get rid of AI and it suggested 'cyber warfare.' And then added: 'Ethically and legally, though, this would be equivalent to attacking critical infrastructure.' Good to know.
On the positive side, Chatbot has advised us, via the humour column I requested, not to lose sleep over it. '… don't worry, AI isn't perfect,' it wrote. 'It once told me that Abraham Lincoln invented TikTok... It's basically a very confident idiot with access to all human knowledge and none of the shame.' If it weren't for that 'access to all human knowledge' clause, I'd think it was describing our current administration.
The Chatbot upshot was: 'AI is powerful, strange, sometimes terrifying, occasionally useful, and always one bad update away from becoming your mother-in-law with WiFi.' OK, so maybe it's got me beat in the snark department, too. Looks like I'll have to rely on my personal charm to get ahead. (Wait…that was the part that made you laugh?) – al.com/Tribune News Service
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