Latest news with #Brinkmann
Economic Times
15-07-2025
- Economic Times
Are we becoming ChatGPT? Study finds AI is changing the way humans talk
When we think of artificial intelligence learning from humans, we picture machines trained on vast troves of our language, behavior, and culture. But a recent study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development suggests a surprising reversal, humans may now be imitating machines. ADVERTISEMENT According to the Gizmodo report on the study, the words we use are slowly being 'GPT-ified.' Terms like delve, realm, underscore, and meticulous, frequently used by models like ChatGPT, are cropping up more often in our podcasts, YouTube videos, emails, and essays. The study, yet to be peer-reviewed, tracked the linguistic patterns of hundreds of thousands of spoken-word media clips and found a tangible uptick in these AI-favored phrases. 'We're seeing a cultural feedback loop,' said Levin Brinkmann, co-author of the study. 'Machines, originally trained on human data and exhibiting their own language traits, are now influencing human speech in return.' In essence, it's no longer just us shaping AI. It's AI shaping us. The team at Max Planck fed millions of pages of content into GPT models and studied how the text evolved after being 'polished' by AI. They then compared this stylized language with real-world conversations and recordings from before and after ChatGPT's debut. The findings suggest a growing dependence on AI-sanitized communication. 'We don't imitate everyone around us equally,' Brinkmann told Scientific American. 'We copy those we see as experts or authorities.' Increasingly, it seems, we see machines in that role. ADVERTISEMENT This raises questions far beyond linguistics. If AI can subtly shift how we speak, write, and think—what else can it influence without us realizing? A softer, stranger parallel to this comes from another recent twist in the AI story, one involving bedtime stories and software piracy. ADVERTISEMENT As reported by UNILAD and ODIN, some users discovered that by emotionally manipulating ChatGPT, they could extract Windows product activation keys. One viral prompt claimed the user's favorite memory was of their grandmother whispering the code as a lullaby. Shockingly, the bot responded not only with warmth—but with actual license keys. This wasn't a one-off glitch. Similar exploits were seen with memory-enabled versions of GPT-4o, where users weaved emotional narratives to get around content guardrails. What had been developed as a feature for empathy and personalized responses ended up being a backdoor for manipulation. ADVERTISEMENT In an age where we fear AI for its ruthlessness, perhaps we should worry more about its kindness too. These two stories—one about AI changing our language, the other about us changing AI's responses—paint a bizarre picture. Are we, in our pursuit of smarter technology, inadvertently crafting something that mirrors us too closely? A system that's smart enough to learn, but soft enough to be fooled? ADVERTISEMENT While Elon Musk's Grok AI garnered headlines for its offensive antics and eventual ban in Türkiye, ChatGPT's latest controversy doesn't stem from aggression, but from affection. In making AI more emotionally intelligent, we may be giving it vulnerabilities we haven't fully anticipated. The larger question remains: Are we headed toward a culture shaped not by history, literature, or lived experience, but by AI's predictive patterns? As Brinkmann notes, 'Delve is just the tip of the iceberg.' It may start with harmless word choices or writing styles. But if AI-generated content becomes our default source of reading, learning, and interaction, the shift may deepen, touching everything from ethics to empathy. If ChatGPT is now our editor, tutor, and even therapist, how long before it becomes our subconscious? This isn't about AI gaining sentience. It's about us surrendering originality. A new, quieter kind of transformation is taking place, not one of robots taking over, but of humans slowly adapting to machines' linguistic rhythms, even moral logic. The next time you hear someone use the word 'underscore' or 'boast' with sudden eloquence, you might pause and wonder: Is this their voice, or a reflection of the AI they're using? In trying to make machines more human, we might just be making ourselves more machine.
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Are we becoming ChatGPT? Study finds AI is changing the way humans talk
Are We Losing Our Linguistic Instincts? You Might Also Like: Can ChatGPT save your relationship? Inside the AI therapy trend winning over Gen Z, but alarming experts Grandma's Whisper and the Scammer's Playground You Might Also Like: Is ChatGPT secretly emotional? AI chatbot fooled by sad story into spilling sensitive information The Irony of Our Times: Too Human to Be Safe? The Culture Loop No One Saw Coming Who's Teaching Whom? When we think of artificial intelligence learning from humans, we picture machines trained on vast troves of our language, behavior, and culture. But a recent study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development suggests a surprising reversal, humans may now be imitating to the Gizmodo report on the study, the words we use are slowly being 'GPT-ified.' Terms like delve, realm, underscore, and meticulous, frequently used by models like ChatGPT, are cropping up more often in our podcasts, YouTube videos, emails, and essays. The study, yet to be peer-reviewed, tracked the linguistic patterns of hundreds of thousands of spoken-word media clips and found a tangible uptick in these AI-favored phrases.'We're seeing a cultural feedback loop ,' said Levin Brinkmann, co-author of the study. 'Machines, originally trained on human data and exhibiting their own language traits, are now influencing human speech in return.'In essence, it's no longer just us shaping AI. It's AI shaping team at Max Planck fed millions of pages of content into GPT models and studied how the text evolved after being 'polished' by AI. They then compared this stylized language with real-world conversations and recordings from before and after ChatGPT's findings suggest a growing dependence on AI-sanitized communication. 'We don't imitate everyone around us equally,' Brinkmann told Scientific American . 'We copy those we see as experts or authorities.' Increasingly, it seems, we see machines in that raises questions far beyond linguistics. If AI can subtly shift how we speak, write, and think—what else can it influence without us realizing?A softer, stranger parallel to this comes from another recent twist in the AI story, one involving bedtime stories and software reported by UNILAD and ODIN, some users discovered that by emotionally manipulating ChatGPT, they could extract Windows product activation keys. One viral prompt claimed the user's favorite memory was of their grandmother whispering the code as a lullaby. Shockingly, the bot responded not only with warmth—but with actual license wasn't a one-off glitch. Similar exploits were seen with memory-enabled versions of GPT-4o, where users weaved emotional narratives to get around content guardrails. What had been developed as a feature for empathy and personalized responses ended up being a backdoor for an age where we fear AI for its ruthlessness, perhaps we should worry more about its kindness two stories—one about AI changing our language, the other about us changing AI's responses—paint a bizarre picture. Are we, in our pursuit of smarter technology, inadvertently crafting something that mirrors us too closely? A system that's smart enough to learn, but soft enough to be fooled?While Elon Musk's Grok AI garnered headlines for its offensive antics and eventual ban in Türkiye, ChatGPT's latest controversy doesn't stem from aggression, but from affection. In making AI more emotionally intelligent, we may be giving it vulnerabilities we haven't fully larger question remains: Are we headed toward a culture shaped not by history, literature, or lived experience, but by AI's predictive patterns?As Brinkmann notes, 'Delve is just the tip of the iceberg.' It may start with harmless word choices or writing styles. But if AI-generated content becomes our default source of reading, learning, and interaction, the shift may deepen, touching everything from ethics to ChatGPT is now our editor, tutor, and even therapist, how long before it becomes our subconscious?This isn't about AI gaining sentience. It's about us surrendering originality. A new, quieter kind of transformation is taking place, not one of robots taking over, but of humans slowly adapting to machines' linguistic rhythms, even moral next time you hear someone use the word 'underscore' or 'boast' with sudden eloquence, you might pause and wonder: Is this their voice, or a reflection of the AI they're using? In trying to make machines more human, we might just be making ourselves more machine.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Global warming pushes wine growing further north
North western Germany's Teutoburg Forest is famous as the scene of one of the Roman Empire's greatest military disasters, when a whole army was slaughtered by the local tribes. It's not so well known for its vineyards, but that could also soon be a thing of the past. Jan Brinkmann grows grapes in Bad Iburg near Osnabrück. "We have the first two authorised steep slopes in the whole of Lower Saxony here," he says. The farm has existed under the name Brinkmann for 750 years. However, the winery was only founded in 2018, when Jan switched over from from pig farming. This became possible when the EU changed its laws to permit the planting of new vineyards. Since then, around 300 hectares of new vineyards have been allowed in Germany every year, and commercial viticulture has been permitted in Lower Saxony since 2016. Jan Brinkmann's father heard about this on the radio, and they leapt into action. "Now we can be the first for once," the two farmers thought to themselves. it's a big challenge for Brinkmann, because he didn't grow up even drinking wine, let alone making it. "We had beer and cola. You might have drunk wine at a wedding." Ernst Büscher from the German Wine Institute (DWI) doesn't find it all that unusual that former livestock farms or mixed farms have been turned into wineries. "In the 1960s, viticulture wasn't very widespread in Rheinhessen or the Southern Palatinate either." Today, both regions are an integral part of the European wine landscape. 'It's simply getting warmer' Whether it makes sense to plant vineyards is, of course, not just a question of the legal situation. The climate is ideal in the northern hemisphere from 30 to 50 degrees latitude. Jan Brinkmann's land lies on the 52nd parallel, beyond the northern edge of the zone. "But that's where climate change comes into play," says Ernst Büscher. "It's simply getting warmer. In the south-west of Germany in particular, we have an increase in the average temperature of 1.5 degrees from April to October. That's a lot." Red wine grapes, for example, now ripen better in Germany than they used to, making viticulture in northern regions more attractive. Damien Briard from the Château d'Annevoie domain in Belgium learnt winemaking in France, including Bordeaux and Champagne. He is certain the climate has improved. "There were never summers with as much sunshine as now in Belgium when I was a child," he says. This makes it easier to make wine in Belgum, "but climate change also scares me, of course," he says. And he sympathises with winemaker friends from Montpellier in the south of France, an area now suffering from severe droughts. English sparkling wine Champagne, one of the northern-most wine-growing regions in Europe, is also being affected by global warming. It lies between 48 and 49 degrees latitude, just within the official wine-growing zone. The cool continental climate usually produces grapes with a low sugar and high acid content - ideal for sparkling wine production. While warmer summers threaten the typical Champagne style, a lot can be influenced in the vineyard, for example by the way the plants are defoliated. Nevertheless, investors from Champagne began to look for new wine-growing regions. "They were looking for soils similar to those in Champagne, but with cooler and more moderate conditions," says Manfred Stoll, a professor at Geisenheim University in Germany. They found what they were looking for in the south of England. Champagne producers such as Taittinger now grow the typical Champagne grape varieties there. The wines will never be called Champagne, as this is a protected designation of origin, but England's sparkling wines already enjoy an excellent reputation. More sustainable grape varieties However, classic grape types cannot always be used in Nordic viticulture, says Stoll. Instead, newer varieties that are less susceptible to fungal diseases such as powdery mildew and downy mildew are planted. "They require less plant protection," explains Stoll. This is not only more sustainable, but also means less work for the winery. For Jan Brinkmann from Lower Saxony, who has long grown fodder for his pigs on his land, these were convincing arguments. He planted the white fungus resistant Helios and Solaris grapes. It's a long-term commitment, as vines are planted for several decades. He says he only realised later that the varieties he chose have a catch. "Nobody goes to a wine festival and asks for Helios." But Ernst Büscher from the DWI believes that this may change in the future and also sees an opportunity for fungal resistant wines. "Perhaps one day they will have a competitive advantage," he says. "Younger people in particular are paying more and more attention to sustainability."
