Context :
ChatGPT is a 'Code Red' for
Google's search business / ET / 26
Dec 2022
Extract :
Over the past three decades, a
handful of products like Netscape's web browser, Google's search engine and
Apple's iPhone have truly upended the tech industry and made what came before
them look like lumbering dinosaurs.
Last month, an experimental chatbot called ChatGPT made its case to be the
industry's next big disrupter.
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. It can even generate ideas
from scratch, including business strategies, Christmas gift suggestions, blog
topics and vacation plans.
Although ChatGPT still has plenty of room for
improvement, its release led Google's management to declare a "code red."
For Google, this was
akin to pulling the fire alarm. Some fear the company may be approaching a
moment that the biggest Silicon Valley outfits dread - the arrival of an
enormous technological change that could upend the business.
For more than 20
years, the Google search engine has served as the world's primary gateway to
the internet. But with a new kind of chatbot technology poised to reinvent or
even replace traditional search engines,
Google could face the
first serious threat to its main search business. One Google executive described
the efforts as make or break for Google's future.
ChatGPT was released by an aggressive
research lab called OpenAI, and Google is
among the many other companies, labs and researchers that have helped build
this technology. But experts believe the tech giant could struggle to compete
with the newer, smaller companies developing these chatbots, because of the
many ways the technology could damage its business.
Google has spent
several years working on chatbots and, like other big tech companies, has
aggressively pursued artificial intelligence technology. Google has already
built a chatbot that could rival ChatGPT.
In fact, the technology at the heart of OpenAI's
chatbot was developed by researchers at Google.
Called LaMDA, or Language Model
for Dialogue Applications, Google's chatbot received enormous attention in the
summer when a Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, claimed it was sentient. This was
not true, but the technology showed how much chatbot technology had improved in
recent months.
Google may be
reluctant to deploy this new tech as a replacement for online search, however,
because it is not suited
to delivering digital ads, which accounted for more than 80% of the
company's revenue last year.
"No company is
invincible; all are vulnerable," said Margaret O'Mara, a professor at the
University of Washington who specializes in the history of Silicon Valley.
"For companies that have become extraordinarily successful doing one
market-defining thing, it is hard to have a second act with something entirely
different."
Because these new
chatbots learn their skills by analyzing huge amounts of data posted to the
internet, they have a way of blending fiction with fact. They deliver
information that can be biased against women and people of color.
They can generate
toxic language, including hate
speech.
All of that could turn
people against Google and damage the corporate brand it has spent decades
building. As OpenAI has shown, newer
companies may be more willing to take their chances with complaints in exchange
for growth.
Even if Google
perfects chatbots, it must tackle another issue: Does this technology
cannibalize the company's lucrative search ads? If a chatbot is responding to
queries with tight sentences, there is less reason for people to click on
advertising links.
"Google has a business
model issue,"
said Amr Awadallah, who worked for Yahoo and Google and now runs Vectara , a startup that is building similar
technology. "If Google gives you the perfect answer to each query, you
won't click on any ads."
Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, has been involved
in a series of meetings to define Google's AI strategy, and he has upended the
work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses, according to a memo and
audio recording obtained by The New York Times.
Employees have also
been tasked with building AI products that can create artwork and other images, such as OpenAI's DALL-E
technology, which has been used by more than 3 million people.
From now until a major
conference expected to be hosted by Google in May, teams within Google's
research, Trust and Safety, and other departments have been reassigned to help develop and release new
AI prototypes and products.
As the technology
advances, industry experts believe, Google must decide whether it will overhaul
its search engine and make a full-fledged chatbot the face of its flagship
service.
Google has been
reluctant to share its technology broadly because, like ChatGPT and similar systems, it can
generate false, toxic and biased information. LaMDA is available to only
a limited number of people through an experimental app, AI
Test Kitchen.
Google sees this as a
struggle to deploy its advanced AI without harming users or society, according to a memo viewed by
the Times.
In one recent meeting,
a manager acknowledged that smaller companies had fewer concerns about
releasing these tools but said Google must wade into the fray or the industry
could move on without it, according to an audio recording of the meeting
obtained by the Times.
Other companies have a
similar problem. Five years ago, Microsoft released a chatbot, called Tay,
that spewed racist, xenophobic and otherwise filthy language and was forced to
immediately remove it from the internet - never to return. In recent weeks, Meta
took down a newer chatbot for many of the same reasons.
Executives said in the
recorded meeting that Google intended to release the technology that drove its
chatbot as a cloud computing service for outside businesses and that it might
incorporate the technology into simple customer support tasks. It will maintain
its trust and safety standards for official products, but it will also release
prototypes that do not meet those standards.
It may limit those
prototypes to 500,000 users and warn them that the technology could produce
false or offensive statements. Since its release on the last day of November, ChatGPT - which can produce similarly toxic material - has been
used by more than 1 million people.
"A cool demo of a
conversational system that people can interact with over a few rounds, and it
feels mind-blowing ? That is a good step, but it is not the thing that will
really transform society," Zoubin Ghahramani, who oversees the AI lab Google Brain, said in an
interview with the Times last month, before ChatGPT was released. "It is not
something that people can use reliably on a daily basis."
Google has already
been working to enhance its search engine using the same technology that
underpins chatbots like LaMDA
and ChatGPT. The technology - a
"large language model" - is not merely a way for machines to carry on
a conversation.
Today, this technology
helps the Google search engine highlight results that aim to directly answer a
question you have asked. In the past, if you typed "Do aestheticians stand
a lot at work?" into Google, it did not understand what you were asking.
Now, Google correctly responds with a short blurb describing the physical
demands of life in the skin care industry.
Many experts believe
Google will continue to take this approach, incrementally improving its search engine rather
than overhauling it. "Google Search is fairly conservative," said
Margaret Mitchell, who was an AI researcher at Microsoft and Google, where she
helped to start its Ethical AI team, and is now at the research lab Hugging Face. "It tries not to mess up
a system that works."
Other companies,
including Vectara and a search engine called
Neeva, are working to enhance search
technology in similar ways. But as OpenAI and
other companies improve their chatbots - working to solve problems with toxicity and bias - this could become a
viable replacement for today's search engines. Whoever gets there first could
be the winner.
"Last year, I was
despondent that it was so hard to dislodge the iron grip of Google," said
Sridhar Ramaswamy, who previously oversaw advertising for Google, including
Search ads, and now runs Neeva. "But
technological moments like this create an opportunity for more
competition."
Internet
sensation ChatGPT attracts the dark side of tech / Business
Line /
09 Jan 2023
Extract :
ChatGPT, the
artificial intelligence-based chatbot tool created by Open AI, that has taken
the world by storm with its human-like ability to respond to queries, is
falling prey to cybercriminals. Two months into its launch, hackers have started using the platform to generate malicious
content to dupe people.
In the Dark Web, a hacker think tank has
been busy posting how ChatGPT
can be used to build
malicious tools and recreate malware strains for data theft.
Another hacker showed how to use the
platform to create a marketplace script on the Dark Web for trading illegal goods,
according to Check Point Research (CPR).
“Recently, I have been playing with ChatGPT. And, I have recreated
many malware strains and techniques based
on some write-ups and analyses of commonly known malware,” a hacker said,
taking part in a thread.
According
to CPR, it is not just coding savvy hackers, but even people with less
technical skills who can use the platform for malicious purposes.
Srinivas Kodali, a privacy and digital infrastructure transparency
activist, says it is quite a natural social phenomenon. “Technology can always
be used for good and bad things. It is the responsibility of the government to
create awareness, educate the public and to regulate and keep tabs on the bad
actors,” he said.
ChatGPT
seems to be aware of this challenge. When a user posed a question on the
platform on the scope for malicious uses, it responded out that some might try
to “use me or other language models to generate spam or phishing
messages”.
“As a language model, I do not have the
ability to take action or interact with the real world, so I cannot be used for
malicious purposes. I am simply a tool that is designed to generate text based on the input that I receive,” it says.
OpenAI, which developed the platform, has
warned that ChatGPT
could sometimes respond to harmful instructions or exhibit biased behavior,
though it has made efforts to make the model refuse inappropriate requests.
“Just as ChatGPT can be used for good
to assist developers in writing code, it can also be used for malicious
purposes. Although the tools that we analyse in this report are pretty basic, it’s only a matter of time until more sophisticated threat actors
enhance the way they use AI-based tools,” Sergey
Shykevich, Threat Intelligence Group Manager at Check Point, said.
MY TAKE :
When
, this morning, I asked ChatGPT to
comment on the above-stated Business Line article, I got following reply :
“It is not
uncommon for new technologies to be used for malicious purposes. This is true
for artificial intelligence and chatbots like ChatGPT.
It is important for developers to be aware of this
possibility and to design their systems with security in mind.
It is also the responsibility of governments
to educate the public about the potential risks of new technologies and to
regulate and monitor the use of these technologies to prevent abuse.
It is important to note that ChatGPT is simply a tool that generates
text based on the input it receives and does not have the ability to
take action or interact with the real world.
However, it is possible for malicious actors
to use the output of the tool for nefarious purposes. “
How can we expect future generations of ChatGPT
– like , AI to evolve ?
Here is my guess :
V 1.0 ( 2010 – 2020 ) > Text –
to – Speech
V 2.0 ( 2020 – 2023 ) > Conversational AI / Text – to – Image / Text – to –
> DigitalAvatarOfHemenParekh.com (powered by
Personal.ai)
SIMULTANEOUSLY
V 3.0 ( 2023 – 2024 ) > Text – to – Feel – Smell – Taste
3 D Volumetric Holograms ( CES 23 )
V 4.0 ( 2024 – 2025 ) > Thought – to – Speech / Action ( Brain Computer
V 5.0 ( 2025 – 2026 ) >
Thought–to–Holographic Transportation
( ? )
With regards,
Hemen Parekh
hcp@RecruitGuru.com / 09
Jan 2023
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