The hours, days, and weeks that we’ve spent basically training these AIs are improving them and bringing them closer to sentient appearance. As they become smarter and more accurate, we trust them more and in a virtuous circle we use them more because we trust them more.
On the surface, we’re doing this to understand what synthetic AI means, but what we’re really doing is improving a third-party company’s product. Without us, the AI-powered Bard, ChatGPT, and Bing Chat would mess up, say horrible things, and generally prove less helpful to us and certainly the companies that made them.
It’s the very act of training, using, training, and using some more that worries me. No one really knows where all this is leading. Is this a world where every mission has an AI partner? Most AIs, including the recently revealed bard, are introduced as project assistants and idea generators. Unlike a personal search engine (although Bard is powered by Google’s massive Knowledge Graph), we tend to develop relationships with these AIs. Each prompt leads to a conversation. It’s like we all have a new co-worker who seems to know a little bit about everything.
Bard, like ChatGPT before him, is fun and helpful, but always apologizing when he’s wrong. This last factor leads to an even deeper relationship with AI, as it makes them more vulnerable and human-like.
The more you request Bard, ChatGPT or Bing chat, the more they find you. When you nudge Bard’s answer, you’re telling the AI brain something important about its massive language model. You don’t get much information from them because they silently suck the soul of your information to make them smarter and more like a real human assistant or better an AI that can take on the task. service and do your job efficiently.
This does not mean stopping using those AI chatbots. They are no more nefarious than they are actually generous or kind (apart from the programming that makes them seem that way).
On the surface, we get its real use. However, approaching these conversations knowing that this is not a one-way relationship where you take and receive while Bard and ChatGPT give and give is probably the smart thing. I suggest approaching all of this as a mutually beneficial but somewhat asymmetrical relationship, such as Bard getting more than he gives. Not smart for AI, but smart enough for the average person.