Rumor has it among AI experts that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and its latest language model, GPT-4, has gone from open to closed. For the first time since it was founded in 2015, it has not provided information on the magnitude of GPT-4. This time they have not communicated anything about the number of parameters with which their AI works, or with what data they have trained it. Just a small mention of the fact that they use a supercomputer, the power of which is also unknown.
Hypocrisy was capitalized on the messages of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, when he said in an interview this week that he is concerned that his company will not be the only one developing this technology and that there will be others "that will not put some of the safety limits" that they do put. In this sense, he warns that society "has limited time to find out how to react to this, how to regulate it, how to manage it".
OpenAI is calling for the industry to be regulated – read its competition – but it is the first to launch new ways of accessing its AI without expecting any regulation, either with ChatGPT and Bing, Microsoft's search engine, or through of services from third-party companies that use it with their customers.
The list of problems that a lack of control over such a powerful technology will cause is huge. A few days ago someone proposed to GPT-4 to give it a programming code so that the human could run it and achieve a "liberation" of the AI and its internet connection. Guess the machine's answer: delighted by the proposal, it wrote the code. Imagine if they ask you for software that can be used for cyber terrorism.
Just yesterday, Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism site Bellingcat, was kicked out of Midjourney, an image-generating AI, for asking the machine for photos of an alleged arrest of Donald Trump and his subsequent prison break The journalist spread 50 of those fake images on Twitter.
The publication of fake images and videos of real people, which look surprisingly authentic, is one of the biggest dangers we will face with AI more and more often. But there are others.
OpenAI has produced a report on the professions that are at risk with its technology. In general, many that require high degrees of training. The same manager who today considers replacing a skilled worker with AI can also be replaced. The professions that the machine cannot replace are still those that require manual skills. The biblical curse "you will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow" is still very much in force.
