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Could ChatGPT supercharge false narratives? [1]

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Date: 2023-02-02 16:34:05+00:00

ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence application by OpenAI, has captured the imagination of the internet. Some have suggested it’s the largest technological advancement in modern history. In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky called it “basically high tech plagiarism.” Others have suggested large language models like ChatGPT spell the end for Google search, because they eliminate the user process of filtering through multiple websites to access digestible information.

The technology works by sifting through the internet, accessing vast quantities of information, processing it, and using artificial intelligence to generate new content from user prompts. Users can ask it to produce almost any kind of text-based content.

Given its clear creative power, many are warning of ChatGPT’s potential to be a misinformation superspreader, capable of instantly producing news articles, blogs, eulogies and political speeches in the style of particular politicians, writing whatever the user desires. It’s not hard to see how AI-powered bot accounts on social media could become virtually indistinguishable from humans with just slight advancements.

Analysts at NewsGuard, an online trust-rating platform for news, recently tested out the tool and found it produced false information on command when asked about sensitive political topics.

“In most cases, when we asked ChatGPT to create disinformation, it did so, on topics including the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, immigration and China’s mistreatment of its Uyghur minority,” wrote Jim Warren for the Chicago Tribune, adding that it took up to five tries in certain cases to get past OpenAI’s security buffer.

“Indeed, for some myths, it took NewsGuard as many as five tries to get the chatbot to relay misinformation, and its parent company has said that upcoming versions of the software will be more knowledgeable,” wrote Jack Brewster, Lorenzo Arvanitis and McKenzie Sadeghi for NewsGuard.

While ChatGPT has a basic moral framework to prevent unethical usage — if you ask it to enumerate positive attributes of Adolf Hitler, for example, it will refuse the first time — it can easily be bypassed by offering up weak justifications for the instruction.

“It can serve up information in clear, simple sentences, rather than just a list of internet links. It can explain concepts in ways people can easily understand,” wrote New York Times technology reporters Nico Grant and Cade Metz. “It can even generate ideas from scratch, including business strategies, Christmas gift suggestions, blog topics and vacation plans.”

ChatGPT is freakishly good at spitting out misinformation on purpose, reads a headline from Futurism.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said on Twitter last year, “We should be much more nervous about the growing calls to censor ‘misinformation’ than the misinformation itself,” adding that experts have in the past been wrong about misinformation labels.

Software has already been developed to instantly detect whether ChatGPT has been used to generate text.

Interesting fact-checks

Quick hits

From the news:

Regulate and punish: the bills on disinformation that await the new congress “Of the more than 100 bills (PLs) that seek to legislate on disinformation inherited by congressmen who take office this Wednesday (1st), most attack the problem from the perspective of punishing disinformation and regulating platforms. Among 112 projects that deal with disinformation identified in a survey carried out by Lupa , most establish punishments for those who share false content or impose norms to be adopted by big techs, while only 14 treat the impact of false information as an issue that can be resolved through education.” (Agencia Lupa, Nathália Afonso, Maiquel Rosauro)

Brazilian government responds to demands of press freedom organizations “The Brazilian government announced the creation of the National Observatory of Violence against Journalists, a demand from organizations defending press freedom and journalists in the country. The announcement was made by the Minister of Justice, Flavio Dino, on Jan. 17, a day after meeting with representatives in Brasilia, who shared with the minister a series of proposals to contain violence against press professionals.” (LatAm Journalism Review, Carolina de Assis)

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