FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/13/1187532997/ftc-investigating-chatgpt-over-potential-consumer-harm

by cratermoon • 3 years ago

138 136 3 years ago

The agency says it's looking into whether the AI tool has harmed people by generating incorrect information about them

Havent heard this complaint before. And I wouldn’t really call this harmful to consumers. If anything its harmful to the subject, but consumers in general. But even so it doesnt meet the definition of libel. How harmful is it really?

Of all the complaints against OpenAI, absolutely none of them seem to be what I think really matters. And that is OpenAI tweaking it to be politically correct and geared to wherever they fall on the overton window. Its a tool. It should be sharp. And we should expect more than of its users leat we want dumber ones.

Eji1700• 3 years ago

How harmful is it really?

You seem to assume it's negative information about people. If it decides to say that some quack hocking raw almonds as cancer cures is FDA approved it's extremely harmful.

Hopefully it's not that bad, but there's clearly a large inbetween here and I wouldn't be surprised if it's over the line.

That's before you even get into defamation cases.

silisili2• 3 years ago

It could absolutely cause real harm to any one person or group at a time. There was a recent case where it accused a professor of sexual harassment, seemingly out of nowhere. Imagine it spreading on Twitter and getting mobbed, doxxed, etc. Or a potential employer seeing it and silently rejecting your employment.

Excuse the link, the big papers have awful popovers, this one seemed acceptable...

https://decrypt.co/125712/chatgpt-wrongly-accuses-law-profes...

userbinator• 3 years ago

We as a population need to be exposed to misinformation to build up immunity against it. The alternative is for those in power to "decide" for us what is true, which is even worse.

I don't trust AI and probably never will. I consider ChatGPT to be merely a PC version of 4chan's infamous /b/ board, which carries the disclaimer "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."

biofunsf6• 3 years ago

At the bottom of the ChatGPT prompt it always says: "ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts."

So... is this just a case of user error? Or maybe the FTC needs to require a larger font size or just better disclosure? Mostly joking, but not entirely since I do think it's too small. Here's a proposal: https://i.imgur.com/IGON20r.png

justinclift• 3 years ago

Real world example of how things can go very, very badly: :(

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings

my_usernam3• 3 years ago

I can only give you an antidote of its dangers in a different category.

My significant other, an otherwise very intelligent women, will ask ChatGPT health questions. She knows it might be wrong, but does it anyways to debug her health. I try to point out that even getting suggested a bad diagnosis is very dangerous. The advice it gives has way less nuanced than say the healthMD which has it owns flaws. And unlike coding questions, you can't assume health advice is right until you prove it wrong.

copperx• 3 years ago

It's always good to cross verify with a tool such as Isabel.

Luckily, ChatGPT and Isabel almost always agree in my tests.

https://symptomchecker.isabelhealthcare.com/

andrewstuart2• 3 years ago

Sam Altman himself sat in front of the top levels of government and freaked them out by telling them his company was putting in place the groundwork to possibly end humanity. A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this.

Having panicked regulators with science fiction, I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

justrealist• 3 years ago

That is completely unrelated to the FTC complaint.

andrewstuart2• 3 years ago

Government is a many headed hydra.

You can't poke a stick at one head and think the others won't bite you.

Altman effectively said to every level of government "OpenAI is extremely dangerous, you'd better look out for us".

All the wisdom of Bilbo Baggins reaching into the trolls pocket.

NoTelnyxBad3• 3 years ago

There's a simple explanation: he believes what he said.

m3kw93• 3 years ago

It’s also simple that he needed moat

ChatGTP11• 3 years ago

If he believed what he said, why would he put the thing on the internet with plugins? Why would he be helping to secure funding to build even more powerful models?

If he believed it was truly dangerous, I don't think he'd be working for a company that is advertising they are actually pursuing super-intelligence ?

Not saying you're wrong, but there is definitely some very noticeable dissonance in his messaging and in his actions.

cmcaleer• 3 years ago

It was a gambit to try to secure OAI's moat. It failed, and while competitors are catching up (still a while to go yet), he put a target on OAI's back.

arthurcolle2• 3 years ago

Yep. Especially with geohot leaks and torrent activity at an all time high - OpenAI looks cooked

biofunsf6• 3 years ago

Why not both? I think true AGI super intelligence (a lot smarter than us) does have the potential to destroy humanity, and as the current leader, Open AI seems closest to achieving that. Of course superintelligence might be far away or just unachievable, but we don't know that. And I agree Altman's statement also builds OAI's moat, but that doesn't make his statement false.

flangola78• 3 years ago

This conspiracy theory is myopic. Altman has been cognizant[1][2] of the very-not-scifi danger of machine intelligence since before OpenAI was even founded. I believe he has dangerous levels of hubris but I don't see him being profit motivated. From his statements in the past and his regrets today[3] of bringing the current tech into existence, I'm confident his motivator is simply the desire to not die.

WHY YOU SHOULD FEAR MACHINE INTELLIGENCE
Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) [1] is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. There are other threats that I think are more certain to happen (for example, an engineered virus with a long incubation period and a high mortality rate) but are unlikely to destroy every human in the universe in the way that SMI could. Also, most of these other big threats are already widely feared.

- Sam Altman, February 25, 2015

[1] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1

[2] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-ceo-sam-altman-says-h...

biofunsf6• 3 years ago

Maybe he's just a CEO doing the ethically responsible thing and not the purely self-serving thing for the sake of shareholders? (though as humans, the shareholders have some stake in humanity too)

hackernewds• 3 years ago

The fact that we are bewildered instead of cherishing, and punishing instead of rewarding shows us what incentives lie in honesty nowadays. Sounds nihilistic but Sam could have done better for his company, by being untruthful

belval• 3 years ago

Wow that's naïve (or sarcasm).

I did an internship with ElementAI a while back. They had a full lobbying division to "come up with a legislative framework with the government for ethical AI". This is quite literally just a business strategy where you get to write the rules because lawmakers see you as "their guys" while challengers are seen as reckless.

It was already a thing in 2019 and it definitely is still a thing. Sam Altman just made the gambit that congress would see him as the honest and prudent guy. Seems like that just didn't work.

probably_wrong• 3 years ago

I can't imagine a valid ethical justification for not releasing the model training details which they withheld. I'd speculate that they did it only to slow their competitors, but I don't have to because "the competitive landscape" was the reason given right there in their paper.

There is (IMHO) no good reason to let OpenAI argue simultaneously for "this technology is too dangerous to be replicated" and for "... but if you have a credit card then you can use it right now".

JumpCrisscross8• 3 years ago

Maybe he's just a CEO doing the ethically responsible thing

But he's not. As Scott Galloway put it, he's raising a gun to grandma's head and screaming "stop me before I shoot her!" He's saying ethically-responsible things. But simultaneously acting in contrast to his words.

Altman is doing an excellent job as a CEO. But that doesn't make him an angel. Just look at Worldcoin, his crypto project, and tell me you see the marks of a humanitarian.

onlyrealcuzzo• 3 years ago

I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this.

Because 1) the government isn't going to do anything and 2) investors will think OMG this must be profitable $$$

m3kw93• 3 years ago

He wanted heavy regulations on AI which would have benefited his moat

guy982387102• 3 years ago

Marketing. OpenAI needs to create illusion that their chatbot is more than just gradual evolution of past models that still needs a lot of work.

darklycan51• 3 years ago

I think he just wanted to enact restrictions on further training of data models (maybe) and make it so that no one could compete with his company, can't see another explanation.

JeremyNT• 3 years ago

It's easy to assume that people like Altman are playing 12-d chess here, but it's possible that he's just a run of the mill eccentric billionaire.

Maybe he really believes that he's the only person alive who can safely usher in a new AI godhead, and he feels this should be self-evident to everybody once he explains it to them.

somenameforme4• 3 years ago

I think something that's increasingly clear is that OpenAI's only moat is time. Every other company, and even completely independent models, are rapidly catching up. And this is happening at the same time that OpenAI is already making claims that they're hitting diminishing returns on model size [1], as happens in literally every single neural net based field.

If Sam's Gambit succeeded, OpenAI could have potentially been granted a near absolute monopoly with the legislative reach of the US government working to imperil competitors through a Gordian knot of rules and regulations which OpenAI could have been the primary creator of, perhaps even as the head of some sort private-public 'Artificial Intelligence Accountability and Trust Division.' It really just gives one that happy feeling of bureaucrazy mixed with dystopia.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/openai-ceo-sam-altman-the-age-of...

gettodachoppa• 3 years ago

Every other company, and even completely independent models, are rapidly catching up.

I see the HN headlines like "new model approaches GPT4 in benchmarks!" but they turn out to suck when I try them. What can I use today that comes close to GPT4? Certainly not Bard.

I generally run 2 tests to gauge:

1. Write me a Python script that blah blah blah

2. Write me the lyrics to a song about blah blah blah

Only GPT4 has given me impressive results. For #2 the other models manage to rhyme (except most local models), but the rhymes on other models are really basic compared to GPT4's.

JumpCrisscross8• 3 years ago

If Sam's Gambit succeeded, OpenAI could have potentially been granted a near absolute monopoly

I don't think this was ever realistic. (I don't think Altman is that politically naive.) Instead, it was marketing. It's saying you've got something so powerful it's dangerous and should be treated carefully. While everyone's debating how to treat it carefully, they concede in public that it's powerful.

tmaly2• 3 years ago

there is a related moat, lack of AI chips. I guess you could say with time more chips will be built.

lyu07282• 3 years ago

He wants regulatory capture obviously

sensanaty• 3 years ago

I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this

Because he sold his soul to the Devil (M$) and is now pursuing regulatory capture in order to build a "Open"AI-controlled moat where no competitors can survive.

throwawayadvsec3• 3 years ago

A really strange thing to do, I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this.

Because it's a very serious possibility(that the singularity could end humanity), and a significant part of the people who are serious about AI are extremely worried about alignment, for good reasons.

I hope he's not surprised when they take action.

Surprised? Do you mean relieved?

Tenoke• 3 years ago

with science fiction

Because he doesn't believe it's Science Fiction, you are projecting.

xg15• 3 years ago

I don't know if SA is an Effective Altruist, but it feels a bit like he got caught up in their weird logic of "AI will be an extinction-level threat to humanity - and the only way to address the threat is somehow to build exactly that AI".

YellOh• 3 years ago

You can take Roko's Basilisk out of the community forum but you can't take Roko's Basilisk out of the community zeitgeist.

godelski• 3 years ago

I remain puzzled as to why any CEO would stir up the government like this.

I have a belief, as a ML researcher, that there are two types of x-risk AI/ML researchers. True believers and hype-men. People do hype the x-risk because it is catchy and gets more people talking. The whole "no news is bad news" strategy, which even worked in recent elections. I think there's two dangers to these people: 1) they eventually turn into true believers (you say something enough, you start to believe it), and 2) it distracts from the risks of the current dangers. For Sam, I think he is a true believer and I'd expect this out of any CEO who spends significant amounts of time hyping people up to gather capital by promising a future AGI.

As for myself, I'm not buying the x-risk arguments. There's a lot I have to say and a lot of nuance, but to put it briefly I'll reference something Mitchel said. She noted how it seems rather unlikely that a super-intelligence, who outperforms us in every single way is also unable to understand intention behind instructions (meaning it doesn't understand us, so a contradiction in super-intelligence). The danger is handing things over to a model without human supervision and letting it hallucinate. So the danger is thinking it is smarter than it actually is, and then trusting it. Concentrating on ineffable abilities of super-intelligences distracts us from this danger, which already exists.

janalsncm• 3 years ago

Well that’s one way to solve AI alignment. Just sue the companies for harming consumers.

I’m half joking, but in the statistical distribution of good, bad and ugly things automation can do, we will need to draw some line as to what is legally actionable. For example, if I Google search recipes for explosives, Google isn’t liable for surfacing accurate information. And imo OpenAI isn’t liable if their chatbot gives the same accurate info in response to the same query in the form of a chat message rather than a link.

flangola78• 3 years ago

One of the differences is Google isn't originally writing that text themselves, they're pointing to someone else who has written it. In a potential lawsuit Google would be able to solidly point to the domain and ownership of the actual author of the text. If (when) OpenAI ends up in court, who will they point to? If someone was slandered, the courts will find a human being responsible for it.

visarga3• 3 years ago

What about the responsibility of the person writing the prompt?

m3kw93• 3 years ago

Has google ever been investigated over surfaced search results that could cause harm?

vouaobrasil3• 3 years ago

It should be investigated.

infinitifall• 3 years ago

And this would achieve what goal exactly? Even more search result sanitizing? Google scrubbing everything even remotely controversial from their search results because it might "harm" someone? No thank you, I value access to information. The last thing we need is more of "As a search engine I cannot...".

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

[dupe]

Some more discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36717420

guy982387102• 3 years ago

This is such a great time to be a lawyer. Just play any AI like a slot machine until it gives you incorrect results and then sue. Probability is a bitch.

shmde• 3 years ago

But dont they have clauses like. Our models sometimes hallucinate, give out wrong answers. Basically use at your own risk and cannot sue us if it hoes wrong

Balgair• 3 years ago

Exceptions exist, that's why we have courts, to figure it out.

You can't put up a sign on a rollercoaster that says it's going to kill customers if they ride and then get away scot-free when someone dies. Though it took a court to say that, I'm sure.

Same thing here. openai is saying things, and then a court is going to have to decide if that's acceptable.

throwaway_ab• 3 years ago

Sam Altman has put a target on every AI company/researchers back with his constant fearmongering when he has spoken directly to the government.

In his selfish efforts to build the ultimate moat around his company, Altman's attempt to get government regulation to stifle future competition might backfire.

Whilst I'd normally say it would be satisfying to see Sam fail due to his selfishness unfortunately this laser focus from the gov might bring the rest of the industry down with him.

vouaobrasil3• 3 years ago

I hope he succeeds, and stifles AI development. AI is too advanced for humans to use properly and it probably will end humanity. If the rest of the industry is brought down, I for one will be happy.

Yiin• 3 years ago

You are talking as if USA regulations apply to the whole world.

seydor• 3 years ago

As we see, it already works

visarga3• 3 years ago

Nobody can do anything to stop AI progress, we are too interested in competing with each other to cooperate against AI.

throwawaaarrgh2• 3 years ago

Levine's Law: Every bad thing a public company does is securities fraud. (and also bank fraud, because companies borrow money from banks)

throwawaaarrgh2• 3 years ago

Why do I always get downvoted for saying this? Like it's not true?

I_am_tiberius2• 3 years ago

ChatGPT is a privacy nightmare. When you disable "Chat history & training", this setting is stored client side in local storage. That means the setting gets lost when switching browser or deleting your browser cache.

Also, when you disable "Chat history & training", plugins are not available to you as a paid user.

I believe Sam Altman doesn't care about his users' privacy at all. I lost trust in him completely, when he first mentioned that he doesn't understand why decentralized Finance might be useful to people. Some months later, when Silicon Valley bank was in the process of shutting down, he started crying. At the same time he supports Worldcoin.

blharr• 3 years ago

The plug-ins part makes total sense to me. I would reason that plug-ins can save your chat history and use them for their own data, so if you want to keep your privacy totally, plug-ins would ve disabled as well.

I_am_tiberius2• 3 years ago

And what about Code interpreter?

exabrial• 3 years ago

I wish the FTC/SEC would break up Facebook, Google, and Apple. ChatGPT is small fish.

FTC investigating ChatGPT over potential consumer harm

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