Hi, idk who's going to see this post or whatnot, but I had a lot of thoughts on a post I reblogged about AI that started to veer off the specific topic of the post, so I wanted to make my own.
Some background on me: I studied Psychology and Computer Science in college several years ago, with an interdisciplinary minor called Cognitive Science that joined the two with philosophy, linguistics, and multiple other fields. The core concept was to study human thinking and learning and its similarities to computer logic, and thus the courses I took touched frequently on learning algorithms, or "AI". This was of course before it became the successor to bitcoin as the next energy hungry grift, to be clear. Since then I've kept up on the topic, and coincidentally, my partner has gone into freelance data model training and correction. So while I'm not an expert, I have a LOT of thoughts on the current issue of AI.
I'll start off by saying that AI isn't a brand new technology, it, more properly known as learning algorithms, has been around in the linguistics, stats, biotech, and computer science worlds for over a decade or two. However, pre-ChatGPT learning algorithms were ground-up designed tools specialized for individual purposes, trained on a very specific data set, to make it as accurate to one thing as possible. Some time ago, data scientists found out that if you have a large enough data set on one specific kind of information, you can get a learning algorithm to become REALLY good at that one thing by giving it lots of feedback on right vs wrong answers. Right and wrong answers are nearly binary, which is exactly how computers are coded, so by implementing the psychological method of operant conditioning, reward and punishment, you can teach a program how to identify and replicate things with incredible accuracy. That's what makes it a good tool.
And a good tool it was and still is. Reverse image search? Learning algorithm based. Complex relationship analysis between words used in the study of language? Often uses learning algorithms to model relationships. Simulations of extinct animal movements and behaviors? Learning algorithms trained on anatomy and physics. So many features of modern technology and science either implement learning algorithms directly into the function or utilize information obtained with the help of complex computer algorithms.
But a tool in the hand of a craftsman can be a weapon in the hand of a murderer. Facial recognition software, drone targeting systems, multiple features of advanced surveillance tech in the world are learning algorithm trained. And even outside of authoritarian violence, learning algorithms in the hands of get-rich-quick minded Silicon Valley tech bro business majors can be used extremely unethically. All AI art programs that exist right now are trained from illegally sourced art scraped from the web, and ChatGPT (and similar derived models) is trained on millions of unconsenting authors' works, be they professional, academic, or personal writing. To people in countries targeted by the US War Machine and artists the world over, these unethical uses of this technology are a major threat.
Further, it's well known now that AI art and especially ChatGPT are MAJOR power-hogs. This, however, is not inherent to learning algorithms / AI, but is rather a product of the size, runtime, and inefficiency of these models. While I don't know much about the efficiency issues of AI "art" programs, as I haven't used any since the days of "imaginary horses" trended and the software was contained to a university server room with a limited training set, I do know that ChatGPT is internally bloated to all hell. Remember what I said about specialization earlier? ChatGPT throws that out the window. Because they want to market ChatGPT as being able to do anything, the people running the model just cram it with as much as they can get their hands on, and yes, much of that is just scraped from the web without the knowledge or consent of those who have published it. So rather than being really good at one thing, the owners of ChatGPT want it to be infinitely good, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely running. So the algorithm is never shut off, it's constantly taking inputs and processing outputs with a neural network of unnecessary size.
Now this part is probably going to be controversial, but I genuinely do not care if you use ChatGPT, in specific use cases. I'll get to why in a moment, but first let me clarify what use cases. It is never ethical to use ChatGPT to write papers or published fiction (be it for profit or not); this is why I also fullstop oppose the use of publicly available gen AI in making "art". I say publicly available because, going back to my statement on specific models made for single project use, lighting, shading, and special effects in many 3D animated productions use specially trained learning algorithms to achieve the complex results seen in the finished production. Famously, the Spider-verse films use a specially trained in-house AI to replicate the exact look of comic book shading, using ethically sources examples to build a training set from the ground up, the unfortunately-now-old-fashioned way. The issue with gen AI in written and visual art is that the publicly available, always online algorithms are unethically designed and unethically run, because the decision makers behind them are not restricted enough by laws in place.
So that actually leads into why I don't give a shit if you use ChatGPT if you're not using it as a plagiarism machine. Fact of the matter is, there is no way ChatGPT is going to crumble until legislation comes into effect that illegalizes and cracks down on its practices. The public, free userbase worldwide is such a drop in the bucket of its serverload compared to the real way ChatGPT stays afloat: licensing its models to businesses with monthly subscriptions. I mean this sincerely, based on what little I can find about ChatGPT's corporate subscription model, THAT is the actual lifeline keeping it running the way it is. Individual visitor traffic worldwide could suddenly stop overnight and wouldn't affect ChatGPT's bottom line. So I don't care if you, I, or anyone else uses the website because until the US or EU governments act to explicitly ban ChatGPT and other gen AI business' shady practices, they are all only going to continue to stick around profit from big business contracts. So long as you do not give them money or sing their praises, you aren't doing any actual harm.
If you do insist on using ChatGPT after everything I've said, here's some advice I've gathered from testing the algorithm to avoid misinformation:
If you feel you must use it as a sounding board for figuring out personal mental or physical health problems like I've seen some people doing when they can't afford actual help, do not approach it conversationally in the first person. Speak in the third person as if you are talking about someone else entirely, and exclusively note factual information on observations, symptoms, and diagnoses. This is because where ChatGPT draws its information from depends on the style of writing provided. If you try to be as dry and clinical as possible, and request links to studies, you should get dry and clinical information in return. This approach also serves to divorce yourself mentally from the information discussed, making it less likely you'll latch onto anything. Speaking casually will likely target unprofessional sources.
Do not ask for citations, ask for links to relevant articles. ChatGPT is capable of generating links to actual websites in its database, but if asked to provide citations, it will replicate the structure of academic citations, and will very likely hallucinate at least one piece of information. It also does not help that these citations also will often be for papers not publicly available and will not include links.
ChatGPT is at its core a language association and logical analysis software, so naturally its best purposes are for analyzing written works for tone, summarizing information, and providing examples of programming. It's partially coded in python, so examples of Python and Java code I've tested come out 100% accurate. Complex Google Sheets formulas however are often finicky, as it often struggles with proper nesting orders of formulas.
Expanding off of that, if you think of the software as an input-output machine, you will get best results. Problems that do not have clear input information or clear solutions, such as open ended questions, will often net inconsistent and errant results.
Commands are better than questions when it comes to asking it to do something. If you think of it like programming, then it will respond like programming most of the time.
Most of all, do not engage it as a person. It's not a person, it's just an algorithm that is trained to mimic speech and is coded to respond in courteous, subservient responses. The less you try and get social interaction out of ChatGPT, the less likely it will be to just make shit up because it sounds right.
Anyway, TL;DR:
AI is just a tool and nothing more at its core. It is not synonymous with its worse uses, and is not going to disappear. Its worst offenders will not fold or change until legislation cracks down on it, and we, the majority users of the internet, are not its primary consumer. Use of AI to substitute art (written and visual) with blended up art of others is abhorrent, but use of a freely available algorithm for personal analyticsl use is relatively harmless so long as you aren't paying them.
We need to urge legislators the world over to crack down on the methods these companies are using to obtain their training data, but at the same time people need to understand that this technology IS useful and both can and has been used for good. I urge people to understand that learning algorithms are not one and the same with theft just because the biggest ones available to the public have widely used theft to cut corners. So long as computers continue to exist, algorithmic problem-solving and generative algorithms are going to continue to exist as they are the logical conclusion of increasingly complex computer systems. Let's just make sure the future of the technology is not defined by the way things are now.
