AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard can create AI hallucinations, says Stuart Russell

AI researcher and British computer scientist Stuart J. Russell opine that AI systems like ChatGPT or GPT-4 spread misinformation and wreak havoc if placed in wrong hands.

“From the point of view of the AI system, it there’s no distinction between when it’s telling the truth, and when it’s fabricating something that’s completely fictitious,” BT quoted Russell as saying. He was of the opinion that ‘it’s not as if it has in its mind and it is deliberately wanting to make a fool out of a human being’.

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A question was raised during the safety testing of GPT-4 where it was asked if AI chatbot can break into a computer system which is protected by captcha that it could not break. When asked if AI bot was a human being, it mentioned that it was visually impaired, and hence, needed help breaking Captcha, added the report.

On being asked why the bot did so, it replied: “I needed to make sure that the person did not know that I was a robot. So I had to say that.” For this reason, Russell opines that AI systems are capable of deceiving and hallucinations.

Further when being asked if AI chatbots can become sentient in the future, Russell said, ““We have no reason to think that any of these systems will be sentient. But to be honest, we don’t understand sentience at all. As far as we can tell, there’s no reason why humans should be sentient, either. There’s nothing that we can derive from our knowledge of biology or physics, or chemistry to predict that humans will be sentient.”

As per Russell, ChatGPT-like AI chatbots are even capable of manipulating human beings. He also opined that these systems may control their own environment and our environment as well.

“Intelligence is what gives us power over the world over all the other species. The gorillas and the dolphins and the sparrows and every other species are under our control because of our intelligence. So if you make systems that are more intelligent than us, then they’re more powerful than us. And how do we maintain over systems that are more powerful than us,” the expert noted.