The online excitement, or in some cases, alarm over Artificial Intelligence continues to spread as more people dive down the rabbit hole. Bizarre conversations with chatbots have slowly been replaced with suspicions as to just how “smart” the AI is. Not everyone delves too deeply into the background information before commenting, however. That seems to be what happened with Senator Chris Murphy (D) of Connecticut. Without saying whether this was a personal experience or something he read elsewhere, Murphy claimed that ChatGPT had “taught itself to do advanced chemistry” despite nobody having programmed it in that field of study. He concluded ominously by saying, “something is coming and we’re not ready.” This caught the attention of some people who were actually involved with the development of the technology and felt compelled to straighten out that bit of misinformation. (Daily Beast)
On Sunday night, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted a bold claim about ChatGPT, saying the chatbot had “taught itself to do advanced chemistry” even though chemistry knowledge wasn’t “built into the model” and nobody “programmed it to learn complicated chemistry.”
“It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked,” Murphy added. “Something is coming. We aren’t ready.”
The only problem: Nearly every single thing Murphy wrote in that tweet was wrong.
ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn't built into the model. Nobody programmed it to learn complicated chemistry. It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked.
Something is coming. We aren't ready.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 27, 2023
One of the developers of the Unified Model Language told Murphy, “you need to better inform yourself.” Another AI researcher told Murphy that he was “dangerously misinformed.”
The author of the linked report points out that Murphy is hardly alone. We have generations of people serving in Congress who are “woefully unprepared” for the changes that AI is already bringing about. There are positives and negatives showing up, but the technology still has limits (at least for now) and we can’t attribute magical levels of abilities to it.
Just for the record, ChatGPT’s language library has plenty of information about chemistry. While working on this article, I thought of a moderately challenging but useful question about the chemical processes that could be used to remove lead from drinking water. ChatGPT didn’t pause for long and launched into an explanation of coagulation, ion exchange, and reverse osmosis along with a short description of how each function.
So is that the end of the debate? Is the current generation of AI totally “safe” for mankind so there’s nothing to worry about? Well, not everyone agrees. Recently, we heard from both filmmaker James Cameron and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, who is known as “the godfather of artificial intelligence.” Neither were totally sanguine about mankind’s future in a world driven by AI. Cameron seemed particularly worried and he makes a good point about the history of technological advancement.
“You talk to all the AI scientists and every time I put my hand up at one of their seminars they start laughing. The point is that no technology has ever not been weaponized. And do we really want to be fighting something smarter than us that isn’t us? On our own world? I don’t think so.”
Hinton was a bit more reserved but still expressed concerns. For one thing, AI technology is advancing far faster than he had predicted.
“Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI. And now I think it may be 20 years or less.”
When asked if AI could get out of control like one of James Cameron’s robotic monstrosities from the Terminator series, he simply replied, “It’s not inconceivable, that’s all I’ll say.”
So the end isn’t here yet and it may not be coming. Or perhaps it will. But if you’re out walking around some night and there’s a flash of light and some naked guy is suddenly there demanding your clothes, you may want to just give them up to be on the safe side.
