“Stop GPT”
Calls for stopping the development of large language model chatbots come from the fear the technology is running away from us and will eventually influence technology beyond a point of no-return. There is reason and it’s not unprecedented. Cellphones and social media have had a negative impact on the development of hundreds of millions of teens. We didn’t know the potential effects of this technology as it was being doled out to youth.
Now, GPT4 comes along and performs at a sufficient quality to resemble the AIs of science fiction. People worry that the same outcome from those science fiction films will happen in reality.
OpenAI has committed to putting in place safeguards to limit the potential negative topics that can be generated on the service. People are creative and will try to circumvent these safeguards, including techniques like prompt injection. However, the more worrisome is that the equivalent of OpenAI will be available without safeguards as others roll out large language models that are “democratized”.
Stopping technology development has never really worked. However, we need to move just as fast to put in place safeguards and counter technologies. It may need to be a citizen-backed movement that can move faster than government.
