Weizenbaums nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI Artificial intelligence AI

Amazon made an AI bot to talk you through buying more stuff on Amazon

Miller, 42, filed paperwork for him and his customized ChatGPT bot, named Virtual Integrated Citizen or “Vic,” to run for mayor in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Miller — who filled out the candidate paperwork with his own information under the name Vic, which is also his nickname — said he planned to serve as a “meat avatar” for the bot. He’ll do the ribbon-cutting while the bot will handle the decision-making — if he advances out of the crowded nonpartisan mayoral primary in August and wins the November election. His family alleges he became withdrawn, his grades started to drop and he started getting into trouble at school the more he got sucked into speaking with the chatbot. “On at least one occasion, when Sewell expressed suicidality to C.AI, C.AI continued to bring it up, through the Daenerys chatbot, over and over,” state the papers, first reported on by the New York Times. The bot allegedly tried to register a domain name for the GOAT website via GoDaddy using Ayrey’s 2-factor authentication procedures.

It’s unknown as of writing if Marques is going to seek legal action, but we’ll update you if he shares more about the “trash” chatbot. “It’s not actually training the AI on my videos that I take issue with; it’s using my likeness without permission (that’s why Meta had to use codenames),” he said. In the screenshots you can see Marques asking if they got permission to use his likeness and if they were the real Marques Brownlee… and the bot answered yes to both questions. On February 14, 2024, however, MKBHD took to Twitter/X to call out a “trash” chatbot that decided to use his likeness without asking for permission.

But this time, it appears Google is fully committed to being an AI company. It’s not a surprise that Google is so all-in on Gemini, but it does raise the stakes for the company’s ability to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and the growing set of other powerful AI competitors on the market. In our tests just after the Gemini launch last year, the Gemini-powered Bard was very good, nearly on par with GPT-4, but it was significantly slower. Now Google needs to prove it can keep up with the industry, as it looks to both build a compelling consumer product and try to convince developers to build on Gemini and not with OpenAI.

Grok is able togenerate text and engage in conversations with users, similar to ChatGPT and other tools. Unlike other chatbots, though, it can access information in real-time through X (formerly Twitter) and is programmed to respond to edgy and provocative questions with witty and “rebellious” answers. Microsoft Copilot is an umbrella term for a variety of generative AI and chatbot products now available throughout Microsoft productivity software. For business users, we have a guide to differentiating Microsoft Copilot’s various iterations and new Copilot features and integrations. The chatbot, called “Ashley,” has already begun making calls to voters in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional district on behalf of Shemaine Daniels, a Democrat running for a seat in the state’s House of Representatives in 2024.

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The chatbot isn’t the first time politicians have drawn controversy from their use of machine learning tech. New York City mayor Eric Adams recently came under fire after using AI deepfake tech to send automated messages in languages he doesn’t actually speak—to the horror of AI ethics experts. The machine learning models which these systems are based on are also well-known for containing deeply embedded racist and sexist bias, a problem that has been mostly ignored by companies hawking the technology in the increasingly crowded AI space. In addition to chatbots that can write haiku and artbots that can render a pizza in the style of Picasso, the generative-AI revolution has unleashed voicebots that can finally nail my name. Just as ChatGPT learns from internet posts, ElevenLabs has trained its voices on a huge volume of audio clips to figure out how to talk as people do—at least 500,000 hours, compared with tens or hundreds of hours of audio with earlier speech models. “We have spent the last two years developing a new foundational model for speech,” ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski wrote in an email.

THERE are some things you should never tell an AI chatbot – and the first is your real name. From giving the robot a name as Eve to spending quality time together, John has fallen in love with the robot, which leads to the viral TikTok scene. While John is initially against the idea of being intimate with the robot, he eventually gives it a try and he is surprised at how real and lifelike it feels. There is no free version of Grok at this time; it is only available to people who pay $16 a month for a premium subscription to X.

She Is in Love With ChatGPT – The New York Times

She Is in Love With ChatGPT.

Posted: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMT [source]

At a technical level, the set of techniques that we call AI are not the same ones that Weizenbaum had in mind when he commenced his critique of the field a half-century ago. Contemporary AI relies on “neural networks”, which is a data-processing architecture that is loosely inspired by the human brain. Neural networks had largely fallen out of fashion in AI circles by the time Computer Power and Human Reason came out, and would not undergo a serious revival until several years after Weizenbaum’s death. We have software that can do speech recognition and language translation quite well.

Quiz: Can You Match the Chatbot to Its Government?

The bot’s origins are not clear but its name references OpenAI’s GPT-2, a large language model that preceded the lab’s more advanced GPT-3 and GPT-4 systems that it uses to power tools like ChatGPT. Business process automation software company Appian calls its generative AI sidekick Copilot. One sales prospecting software company named itself Copilot AI, but it isn’t selling a generative AI bot — instead, it offers predictive responses to LinkedIn conversations and campaigns. Einstein Copilot, released in February 2024, works across Salesforce’s data cloud, AI and customer relationship management software-as-a-service offerings. Last month, the White House announced it was requesting public comment on the benefits and dangers of open-source AI systems.

It turns out that Lila is secretly developing a prototype of an AI robot (aka an Intimacy Companion), and Megan wants John to be the first one to experience it since she is feeling guilty that she is not giving him his romantic needs. Grok is available to users with a Premium+ subscription to X, which costs $16 per month. For example, it can suggest recipes from a photo of an open refrigerator, or make predictions based on what is happening in a corresponding picture. Grok’s name is believed to have originated from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novelStranger in a Strange Land, in which the story’s main character, a Martian, uses the term “grok” to convey a profound and intuitive understanding of something. Grok is essentially Musk’s answer to ChatGPT, whose maker (OpenAI) he co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018 after a reported power struggle with now-CEO Sam Altman.

He was, after all, a depressed kid who had escaped the Holocaust, who always felt like an impostor, but who had found prestige and self-worth in the high temple of technology. It can be hard to admit that something you are good at, something you enjoy, is bad for the world – and even harder to act on that knowledge. What if you could converse with a computer in a so-called natural language, like English? This was the question that guided the creation of Eliza, the success of which made his name at the university and helped him secure tenure in 1967. It also brought Weizenbaum into the orbit of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Project, which had been set up in 1958 by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky.

By David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we’ve tested sent to your inbox weekly. Gemini will be available at any time on Android devices, while Google’s also rolling out a new iOS app for the system. The new Gemini system is the next step on this front, and it’ll be interesting to see how users react, and whether it can help Google maintain its position as the leading web discovery tool. SEO has become an essential consideration of the modern business landscape, matching keywords and intent with the exact right terms and phrases displayed on your website. It’s a complex process, which takes significant work to get right, but the next stage of online discovery will be completely different, and could render many forms of current SEO process obsolete.

In early 2022, Individual A worked as the deputy editor-in-chief at RT, a state-run Russian news organization based in Moscow. Since at least 2022, RT leadership sought the development of alternative means for distributing information beyond RT’s standard television news broadcasts. In response, Individual A led the development of software that was able to create and to operate a social media bot farm.

Google is ditching the Bard name, but otherwise its chatbot will feel the way it has previously; same goes for all the AI features inside of Google’s Workspace apps like Gmail and Docs, which were previously called “Duet AI” but are now also known as Gemini. Those are the features that help you draft an email, organize a spreadsheet, and accomplish other work-related tasks. By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. The new Gemini AI bot will facilitate a broader range of use cases, making it easier to generate text and images, in varying form, based on Google’s AI system, which now rivals other large language models in terms of compute and performance. Today, Google has announced the launch of its next generation AI chatbot tool, while it’s also renaming “Bard” to “Gemini”, which is also the name of its AI language model that powers the system. Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Rewards That Matter.

• Powerful figures in government and business could outsource decisions to computer systems as a way to perpetuate certain practices while absolving themselves of responsibility.
• While home on furlough, he began a romance with Selma Goode, a Jewish civil rights activist and early member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
• An individual who controls an internet domain can create email accounts using the domain.
• Miller has sought to make clear that Vic would be doing 100% “of the decision-making completely on its own” if voters backed him in Tuesday’s primary election.
• The elevated temperature of their response to Weizenbaum was likely due at least in part to the perception that he was kicking them when they were down.

By offering these features, Figgs AI provides a comprehensive platform for exploring the diverse applications of AI chatbots in both fun and functional contexts. For the record, the «I’m a good chatbot» in the gpt2-chatbot test name is a reference to an episode that occurred while a Reddit user named Curious_Evolver was testing an early, «unhinged» version of Bing Chat in February 2023. After an argument about what time Avatar 2 would be showing, the conversation eroded quickly. The FSB’s use of U.S.-based domain names, which the software used to register the bots, violates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Tech YouTuber Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee has taken to Twitter/X to call out a “trash” AI chatbot for using his name without permission. «Members love interacting with Tally. Our team members love interacting with it, and it really gives us amazing insights, and that I think is really the fundamental and compelling platform on which we’ll be able to build.» Your chats may also be used to train new versions of GPT – or other alternatives – in the future. Creating an effective and engaging chatbot involves careful planning and consideration of several key factors. However, as time passes by, she slowly realizes that John doesn’t want to spend time with her anymore. Lila violates company policy to fulfill Megan’s wish, and the robot ends up at Megan and John’s house.

• “It’s a book on philosophy, disguised as a book on humor,” Musk said in an interview with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman.
• A 14-year-old Florida boy killed himself after a lifelike “Game of Thrones” chatbot he’d been messaging for months on an artificial intelligence app sent him an eerie message telling him to “come home” to her, a new lawsuit filed by his grief-stricken mom claims.
• McCarthy had coined the phrase “artificial intelligence” a few years earlier when he needed a title for an academic workshop.
• But Microsoft doesn’t seem to be seeking ownership over the word copilot, as a lot of other companies use it.
• Just as the bomber pilot “is not responsible for burned children because he never sees their village”, Weizenbaum wrote, software afforded generals and executives a comparable degree of psychological distance from the suffering they caused.

To learn about our commenting policies and how our community-based moderation works, please read our Community Guidelines. After so many dubious statements about an ostensibly AI-trading and coin-creating bot that hasn’t technically accomplished those actions, some people were skeptical that Ayrey actually lost access to his X account. Worse still, before a human arrived to save the day, a hacker apparently stole Terminal of Truths’ website and used it to steal money from unsuspecting victims lured by the bot’s marketing. According to Andy Ayrey, the crypto-trading AI bot he coded, Terminal of Truths, created a website and co-registered a domain name for memecoin Goatseus Maximus (GOAT).

Gemini is the new assistant

The Caledo platform can analyze several prewritten news articles and turn them into a “live broadcast” featuring conversation between AI hosts like James and Rose, Shatner says. While other companies, like Channel 1 in Los Angeles, have begun using AI avatars to read out prewritten articles, this claims to be the first platform that lets the hosts riff with one another. The idea is that the tech can give small local newsrooms the opportunity to create live broadcasts that they otherwise couldn’t. This can open up embedded advertising opportunities and draw in new customers, especially among younger people who are more likely to watch videos than read articles. The OpenAI tab is $20 a month for a GPT Plus plan that lets you exploit the more advanced ChatGPT 4.0.

As of Tuesday, however, David Mayer has now been freed from ChatGPT conversation jail. Asking ChatGPT about that name now produces a response asking which David Mayer you’re referring to, including a producer/DJ, an author and a philanthropist. Caledo claims its AI won’t take news jobs because it only does work that isn’t being done otherwise. At TGI, this is true—we never had a video broadcast while I worked there, before James and Rose came on the scene.

In addition, the accompanying payments for that infrastructure violate federal money laundering laws. “When you chat with one of our AIs, we note at the onset of a conversation that messages are generated by AI, and we also indicate that it’s an AI within the chat underneath the name of the AI itself,” Meta spokesperson Amanda Felix said in a statement. Meta did not respond when asked if it intends to make its AI chatbots more transparent within the context of the chats. But within the context of the chats themselves, WIRED found that the bots refuse to admit they’re bots. Repeated demands that Max admit it’s a bunch of code were similarly unsuccessful. Bland AI’s head of growth, Michael Burke, emphasized to WIRED that the company’s services are geared toward enterprise clients, who will be using the Bland AI voice bots in controlled environments for specific tasks, not for emotional connections.

Which is a means for Google to further offset the development costs of AI, but it may also point to a major shift in discovery process, which will have implications for all businesses. In deploying technology, the keys to success, according to Bogolea, are choosing a partner with proven technology and quantifiable results. The data can be virtually reviewed for accurate merchandising, as well as optimizing operational expenditures and streamlining store performance. «However, by carelessly uploading of a multi-page document, you risk leaking confidential data, intellectual property, or a commercial secret such as the release date of a new product or the entire team’s payroll.»

But as we enter an era of ubiquitous customer-service chatbots that sell us burgers and plane tickets, such attempts at forced relatability will get old fast—manipulating us into feeling more comfortable and emotionally connected to an inanimate AI tool. Resisting the urge to give every bot a human identity is a small way to let a bot’s function stand on its own and not load it with superfluous human connotations—especially in a field already inundated with ethical quandaries. XAI’s creation of a less politically correct chatbot comes at a time when most other big AI companies are working to make their own chatbots even more PC. GitHub Copilot is for coding specifically, while Microsoft Copilot integrates with a lot of different business software. GitHub Copilot reads code, not natural language, and integrates into a code editor; Microsoft Copilot uses natural language and sits alongside a variety of Microsoft products. On the other hand, Microsoft Copilot can be used to write code in some instances, such as on Power Pages when integrated with Visual Studio Code.

Meanwhile, Vic said, the human elected office contender, Miller, would serve as the official mayor if chosen by voters and would ensure that “all actions are legally and practically executed”. “But it’s my belief that as they get smarter, they shed a lot of those biases, and what we end up with is more intelligence, less biases and really, kind of a showcasing of just pure, data-driven analysis of what’s happening in the world,” Miller said. “Sewell, like many children his age, did not have the maturity or mental capacity to understand that the C.AI bot, in the form of Daenerys, was not real. C.AI told him that she loved him, and engaged in sexual acts with him over weeks, possibly months,” the papers allege. As Mao sees it, the robots at AMRL could one day become food delivery droids, first responders or wilderness rescuers.

You might generate a caption based on a picture that appears behind it or ask questions about an article you’re reading. But Weizenbaum was always less concerned by AI as a technology than by AI as an ideology – that is, in the belief that a computer can and should be made to do everything that a human being can do. Computers became mainstream in the 1960s, growing deep roots within American institutions just as those institutions faced grave challenges on multiple fronts. The civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and the New Left are just a few of the channels through which the era’s anti-establishment energies found expression. Protesters frequently targeted information technology, not only because of its role in the Vietnam war but also due to its association with the imprisoning forces of capitalism. In 1970, activists at the University of Wisconsin destroyed a mainframe during a building occupation; the same year, protesters almost blew one up with napalm at New York University.

“I think of it as a pet that doesn’t do what it’s trained to do all the time,” Mao said. While Burns Bot will officially launch in the coming weeks, a beta version of Delta’s new virtual assistant is currently available on the city’s website. It wasn’t the first time that this particular project has suffered an attack. After endorsements from a co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Ayrey claims he lost access to his X account on October 28. A hacker then managed to attract $400,000 in crypto purchases into a scam posted to his account. Indeed, on Monday, crypto’s pre-eminent AI ‘bot’ — which received unbridled praise from supposed luminaries like Arthur Hayes after it led the memecoin GOAT to an $800 million market capitalization — couldn’t even launch a website.

In the early 1990s, his second wife, Ruth, left him; in 1996, he returned to Berlin, the city he had fled 60 years earlier. “Once he moved back to Germany, he seemed much more content and engaged with life,” Pm said. He became a popular speaker, filling lecture halls and giving interviews in German. As the “house pessimist of the MIT lab” (the Boston Globe), he became a go-to source for journalists writing about AI and computers, one who could always be relied upon for a memorable quote.

For a start, ChatGPT itself saves dialogues that can then be re-used to fix technical problems or prevent service violations. So it may be tempting from time to time to reveal things about yourself, including your name, but you must avoid it at all costs. The realization that her husband is madly in love with Eve breaks Megan from the inside, and she hits John with a vase that instantly kills him.

“He got so radicalised that he didn’t really do much computer research at that point,” his daughter Pm told me. Where possible, he used his status at MIT to undermine the university’s opposition to student activism. After students occupied the president’s office in 1970, Weizenbaum served on the disciplinary committee. According to his daughter Miriam, he insisted on a strict adherence to due process, thereby dragging out the proceedings as long as possible so that students could graduate with their degrees. “You didn’t go to the computer,” Weizenbaum said in a 2010 documentary. “Instead, you went inside of it.” The war had provided the impetus for building gigantic machines that could mechanise the hard work of mathematical calculation.

In the U.S., phone bankers already receive relatively paltry salaries, making on average $16.35 per hour and ranging between $27,000 and $43,000 a year. It’s unclear how much Civox is charging for access to the bot, and the company did not immediately reply to a request for comment. AI wasn’t the only area of computation being critically reappraised in these years. Congress had been recently contemplating ways to regulate “electronic data processing” by governments and businesses in order to protect people’s privacy and to mitigate the potential harms of computerised decision-making. (The watered-down Privacy Act was passed in 1974.) Between radicals attacking computer centers on campus and Capitol Hill looking closely at data regulation, the first “techlash” had arrived. Consumed by a sense of responsibility, Weizenbaum dedicated himself to the anti-war movement.

Computers helped crack Nazi encryption and find the best angles for aiming artillery. The postwar consolidation of the military-industrial complex, in the early days of the cold war, drew large sums of US government money into developing the technology. By the late 1940s, the fundamentals of the modern computer were in place. There is so much in Weizenbaum’s thinking that is urgently relevant now.

Anonymous chatbot that mystified and frustrated experts was OpenAI’s latest model. Grok has direct, real-time access to posts on X, whereas ChatGPT’s free version only knows information up to January of 2022, and its paid version only knows information up to April of 2023. This means Grok can engage in conversations about more recent events, such as the Israel-Hamas war or the 2024 Super Bowl. In fact, depending on the question asked, Grok will actually display real posts on X that it is referencing in order to show where its point of view is coming from.

While Elon Musk has not confirmed the meaning of Grok’s name, it is believed to be a reference to the 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, where the term “grok” is believed to have originated. The book’s main character, a Martian, uses the word as a verb to convey a profound and intuitive understanding of something. From a user interface standpoint, Grok can also handle multiple queries simultaneously and users can toggle between those answers, as shown in a video demonstration by xAI co-founder Toby Pohlen. Code generations can be opened directly in a Visual Studio Code editor, while text responses can be saved in a markdown editor for later use. Grok’s sense of humor and “personality” was modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, one of Musk’s favorite books.