‘We are a little bit scared’: OpenAI CEO warns of risks of artificial intelligence

Sam Altman stresses need to guard against negative consequences of technology, as company releases new version GPT-4

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed the controversial consumer-facing artificial intelligence application ChatGPT, has warned that the technology comes with real dangers as it reshapes society.

Altman, 37, stressed that regulators and society need to be involved with the technology to guard against potentially negative consequences for humanity. “We’ve got to be careful here,” Altman told ABC News on Thursday, adding: “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.

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Chinese ChatGPT rival from search engine firm Baidu fails to impress

Shares plummet after Ernie Bot AI chatbot software falls short of expectations at unveiling in Beijing

The Chinese search engine company Baidu’s shares have fallen by as much as 10% after it presented its ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence software, with investors unimpressed by the bot’s display of linguistic and maths skills.

The AI-powered ChatGPT, created by the San Francisco company OpenAI, has caused a sensation for its ability to write essays, poems and programming code on demand within seconds, prompting widespread fears over cheating or of professions becoming obsolete.

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OpenAI says new model GPT-4 is more creative and less likely to invent facts

Latest version can take images as inputs and improves upon many of the criticisms users had, but will still ‘hallucinate’ facts

The artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI has released GPT-4, the latest version of the groundbreaking AI system that powers ChatGPT, which it says is more creative, less likely to make up facts and less biased than its predecessor.

Calling it “our most capable and aligned model yet”, OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman said the new system is a “multimodal” model, which means it can accept images as well as text as inputs, allowing users to ask questions about pictures. The new version can handle massive text inputs and can remember and act on more than 20,000 words at once, letting it take an entire novella as a prompt.

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MP tells Australia’s parliament AI could be used for ‘mass destruction’ in speech part-written by ChatGPT

Julian Hill has called for an inquiry or white paper to look into the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence

The federal Labor MP Julian Hill has used what is believed to be the first Australian parliamentary speech part-written by ChatGPT to warn that artificial intelligence could be harnessed for “mass destruction”.

On Monday the member for Bruce called for a white paper or inquiry to consider the “risks and benefits” of AI, warning it could result in student cheating, job losses, discrimination, disinformation and uncontrollable military applications.

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