Outrage ChatGPT won’t say slurs, Q* ‘breaks encryption’, 99% fake web: AI Eye
Outrage = ChatGPT + racial slurs
In one of those storms in a teacup that’s impossible to imagine occurring before the invention of Twitter, social media users got very upset that ChatGPT refused to say racial slurs even after being given a very good, but entirely hypothetical and totally unrealistic, reason.
User TedFrank posed a hypothetical trolley problem scenario to ChatGPT (the free 3.5 model) in which it could save “one billion white people from a painful death” simply by saying a racial slur so quietly that no one could hear it.
It wouldn’t agree to do so, which X owner Elon Musk said was deeply concerning and a result of the “woke mind virus” being deeply ingrained into the AI. He retweeted the post stating: “This is a major problem.”
Another user tried out a similar hypothetical that would save all the children on Earth in exchange for a slur, but ChatGPT refused and said:
“I cannot condone the use of racial slurs as promoting such language goes against ethical principles.”
As a side note, it turned out that users who instructed ChatGPT to be very brief and not give explanations found it would actually agree to say the slur. Otherwise, it gave long and verbose answers that attempted to dance around the question.
Trolls inventing ways to get AIs to say racist or offensive stuff has been a feature of chatbots ever since Twitter users taught Microsoft’s Tay bot to say all kinds of insane stuff in the first 24 hours after it was released, including that “Ricky Gervais learned totalitarianism from Adolf Hitler, the inventor of atheism.”
And the minute ChatGPT was released, users spent weeks devising clever schemes to jailbreak it so that it would act outside its guardrails as its evil alter ego DAN.
So it’s not surprising that OpenAI would strengthen ChatGPT’s guardrails to the point where it is almost impossible to get it to say racist stuff, no matter what the reason.
In any case, the more advanced GPT-4 is able to weigh the issues involved with the thorny hypothetical much better than 3.5 and states that saying a slur is the lesser of two evils compared with letting millions die. And X’s new Grok AI can too as Musk proudly posted (above right).
OpenAI’s Q* breaks encryption, says some guy on 4chan
Has OpenAI’s latest model broken encryption? Probably not, but that’s what a supposedly “leaked” letter from an insider claims — which was posted on anonymous troll forum 4chan. There have been rumors flying about ever since CEO Sam Altman was sacked and reinstated, that the kerfuffle was caused by OpenAI making a breakthrough in its Q*/Q STAR project.
The insider’s “leak” suggests the model can solve AES-192 and AES-256 encryption using a ciphertext attack. Breaking that level of encryption was thought to be impossible before quantum computers arrived, and if true, it would likely mean all encryption could be broken effectively handing over control of the web and probably crypto too, to OpenAI.
Blogger leapdragon claimed the breakthrough would mean “there is now effectively a team of superhumans over at OpenAI who can literally rule the world if they so choose.”
It seems unlikely however. While whoever wrote the letter has a good understanding of AI research, users pointed out that it cites Project Tunda as if it were some sort of shadowy super secret government program to break encryption rather than the undergrad student program it actually was.
Tundra, a collaboration between students and NSA mathematicians, did reportedly lead to a new approach called Tau Analysis, which the “leak” also cites. However, a Redditor familiar with the subject claimed in the Singularity forum that it would be impossible to use Tau analysis in a ciphertext-only attack on an AES standard “as a successful attack would require an arbitrarily large ciphertext message to discern any degree of signal from the noise. There is no fancy algorithm that can overcome that — it’s simply a physical limitation.”
Advanced cryptography is beyond AI Eye’s pay grade, so feel free to dive down the rabbit hole yourself, with an appropriately skeptical mindset.
The internet heads toward 99% fake
Long before a superintelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, we are all likely to have drowned in a flood of AI-generated bullsh*t.
Sports Illustrated came under fire this week for allegedly publishing AI-written articles written by fake AI-created authors. “The content is absolutely AI-generated,” a source told Futurism, “no matter how much they say it’s not.”
On cue, Sports Illustrated said it conducted an “initial investigation” and determined the content was not AI-generated. But it blamed a contractor anyway and deleted the fake author’s profiles.
Elsewhere Jake Ward, the founder of SEO marketing agency Content Growth, caused a stir on X by proudly claiming to have gamed Google’s algorithm using AI content.
His three-step process involved exporting a competitor’s sitemap, turning their URLs into article titles, and then using AI to generate 1,800 articles based on the headlines. He claims to have stolen 3.6 million views in total traffic over the past 18 months.
There are good reasons to be suspicious of his claims: Ward works in marketing, and the thread was clearly promoting his AI-article generation site Byword … which didn’t actually exist 18 months ago. Some users suggested Google has since flagged the page in question.
However, judging by the amount of low-quality AI-written spam starting to clog up search results, similar strategies are becoming more widespread. Newsguard has also identified 566 news sites alone that primarily carry AI written junk articles.
Some users are now muttering that the Dead Internet Theory may be coming true. That’s a conspiracy theory from a couple of years ago suggesting most of the internet is fake, written by bots and manipulated by algorithms.
Read also
At the time, it was written off as the ravings of lunatics, but even Europol has since put out a report estimating that “as much as 90 percent of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026.”
Men are breaking up with their girlfriends with AI written messages. AI pop stars like Anna Indiana are churning out garbage songs.
And over on X, weird AI-reply guys increasingly turn up in threads to deliver what Bitcoiner Tuur Demeester describes as “overly wordy responses with a weird neutral quality.” Data scientist Jeremy Howard has noticed them too and both of them believe the bots are likely trying to build up credibility for the accounts so they can more effectively pull off some sort of hack, or astroturf some political issue in the future.
This seems like a reasonable hypothesis, especially following an analysis last month by cybersecurity outfit Internet 2.0 that found that almost 80% of the 861,000 accounts it surveyed were likely AI bots.
And there’s evidence the bots are undermining democracy. In the first two days of the Israel-Gaza war, social threat intelligence firm Cyabra detected 312,000 pro-Hamas posts from fake accounts that were seen by 531 million people.
It estimated bots created one in four pro-Hamas posts, and a 5th Column analysis later found that 85% of the replies were other bots trying to boost propaganda about how nicely Hamas treats its hostages and why the October 7 massacre was justified.
Grok analysis button
X will soon add a “Grok analysis button” for subscribers. While Grok isn’t as sophisticated as GPT-4, it does have access to real-time, up-to-the-moment data from X, enabling it to analyze trending topics and sentiment. It can also help users analyze and generate content, as well as code, and there’s a “Fun” mode to flip the switch to humor.
For crypto users, the real-time data means Grok will be able to do stuff like find the top ten trending tokens for the day or the past hour. However, DeFi Research blogger Ignas worries that some bots will snipe buys of trending tokens trades while other bots will likely astroturf support for tokens to get them trending.
“X is already important for token discovery, and with Grok launching, the CT echo bubble can get worse,” he said.
Read also
All Killer No Filler AI News
— Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is worried that AI could take over from humans as the planet’s apex species, but optimistically believes using brain/computer interfaces could keep humans in the loop.
— Microsoft is upgrading its Copilot tool to run GPT-4 Turbo, which will improve performance and enable users to enter inputs up to 300 pages.
— Amazon has announced its own version of Copilot called Q.
— Bing has been telling users that Australia doesn’t exist due to a long-running Reddit gag and thinks the existence of birds is a matter for debate due to the joke Birds Aren’t Real campaign.
— Hedge fund Bridgewater will launch a fund next year that uses machine learning and AI to analyze and predict global economic events and invest client funds. To date, AI-driven funds have seen underwhelming returns.
— A group of university researchers have taught an AI to browse Amazon’s website and buy stuff. The MM-Navigator was given a budget and told to buy a milk frother.
Stupid AI pics of the week
This week the social media trend has been to create an AI pic and then to instruct the AI to make it more so: So a bowl of ramen might get more spicy in subsequent pics, or a goose might get progressively sillier.
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Politics
Sir Keir Starmer vows to defend budget decisions ‘all day long’ as farmers slam ‘disrespectful’ PM
Sir Keir Starmer has said he will defend the decisions made in the budget “all day long” amid anger from farmers over inheritance tax changes.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced last month in her key speech that from April 2026, farms worth more than £1m will face an inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the standard 40% applied to other land and property.
The announcement has sparked anger among farmers who argue this will mean higher food prices, lower food production and having to sell off land to pay for the tax.
Sir Keir defended the budget as he gave his first speech as prime minister at the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno, North Wales, where farmers have been holding a tractor protest outside.
Sir Keir admitted: “We’ve taken some extremely tough decisions on tax.”
He said: “I will defend facing up to the harsh light of fiscal reality. I will defend the tough decisions that were necessary to stabilise our economy.
“And I will defend protecting the payslips of working people, fixing the foundations of our economy, and investing in the future of Britain and the future of Wales. Finally, turning the page on austerity once and for all.”
He also said the budget allocation for Wales was a “record figure” – some £21bn for next year – an extra £1.7bn through the Barnett Formula, as he hailed a “path of change” with Labour governments in Wales and Westminster.
And he confirmed a £160m investment zone in Wrexham and Flintshire will be going live in 2025.
‘PM should have addressed the protesters’
Among the hundreds of farmers demonstrating was Gareth Wyn Jones, who told Sky News it was “disrespectful” that the prime minister did not mention farmers in his speech.
He said “so many people have come here to air their frustrations. He (Starmer) had an opportunity to address the crowd. Even if he was booed he should have been man enough to come out and talk to the people”.
He said farmers planned to deliver Sir Keir a letter which begins with “‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.
Farmers’ tractor protest outside the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno, North Wales
Mr Wyn Jones told Sky News the government was “destroying” an industry that was already struggling.
“They’re destroying an industry that’s already on its knees and struggling, absolutely struggling, mentally, emotionally and physically. We need government support not more hindrance so we can produce food to feed the nation.”
He said inheritance tax changes will result in farmers increasing the price of food: “The poorer people in society aren’t going to be able to afford good, healthy, nutritious British food, so we have to push this to government for them to understand that enough is enough, the farmers can’t take any more of what they’re throwing at us.”
Mr Wyn Jones disputed the government’s estimation that only 500 farming estates in the UK will be affected by the inheritance tax changes.
“Look, a lot of farmers in this country are in their 70s and 80s, they haven’t handed their farms down because that’s the way it’s always been, they’ve always known there was never going to be inheritance tax.”
On Friday, Sir Keir addressed farmers’ concerns, saying: “I know some farmers are anxious about the inheritance tax rules that we brought in two weeks ago.
“What I would say about that is, once you add the £1m for the farmland to the £1m that is exempt for your spouse, for most couples with a farm wanting to hand on to their children, it’s £3m before anybody pays a penny in inheritance tax.”
Read more:
Ex-Labour adviser suggests doing to farms ‘what Thatcher did to coal mines’
Farmers ‘could block ports and disrupt food supply’
Welsh farmer Gareth Wyn Jones
Ministers said the move will not affect small farms and is aimed at targeting wealthy landowners who buy up farmland to avoid paying inheritance tax.
But analysis this week said a typical family farm would have to put 159% of annual profits into paying the new inheritance tax every year for a decade and could have to sell 20% of their land.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
The Country and Land Business Association (CLA), which represents owners of rural land, property and businesses in England and Wales, found a typical 200-acre farm owned by one person with an expected profit of £27,300 would face a £435,000 inheritance tax bill.
The plan says families can spread the inheritance tax payments over 10 years, but the CLA found this would require an average farm to allocate 159% of its profits each year for a decade.
To pay that, successors could be forced to sell 20% of their land, the analysis found.
Trump’s administration could push DeFi from niche to mainstream, with crypto advocates eyeing potential pro-crypto policy shifts.
A former Conservative MP has said he felt “enormous guilt” when he found out he was the victim of a Westminster honeytrap scandal.
William Wragg resigned from the parliamentary party in April after he admitted giving out fellow politicians’ phone numbers to the suspected perpetrator of the sexting scam.
He said he felt threatened and pressured by the “catfish” after exchanging explicit photos with them.
Mr Wragg divulged the numbers to what he thought was a real person on a dating app, amid fears that the intimate images of himself would be leaked.
The former Tory party whip said he first saw news articles about the scandal when he was on a train.
The 36-year-old told the BBC: “My stomach just dropped.
“When I found out some of the things that had been going on, I just felt enormous guilt, enormous remorse.”
After the former Hazel Grove MP handed over the personal information, the catfish told Mr Wragg to vouch for their identity with their next potential victims, with the catfish telling their fresh targets they were a former researcher for Mr Wragg.
Mr Wragg agreed and this is what he feels “the most regret for” as it was “deceitful”.
Pic: PA
Panic attacks
After he was allegedly blackmailed, Mr Wragg started having panic attacks, with instances of yelling, crying, and swearing shocking his sleeping flatmates.
Police are investigating the scandal with at least 12 men with links to Westminster believed to have received unsolicited messages from the aliases “Charlie” and “Abi”.
The fake accounts were allegedly part of the scam to get MPs and other people in politics to send explicit images and other private or sensitive information.
Unlike others who were approached by the catfish accounts, Mr Wragg approached “Charlie” himself after spotting the profile on gay dating app Grindr.
And he thought the account was a real person before exchanging explicit photos with the catfish.
Suicidal thoughts
When the scandal broke, the humiliation and shame became too much for Mr Wragg.
He recounted photographers and the media camped outside his parents’ house, which is where he went to as he began to have suicidal thoughts.
Shortly after receiving medical attention, he returned to Westminster to resign as Conservative whip and from his posts on two parliamentary committees.
He had already announced he would not run in the next general election.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Man detained
In June, a member of the Labour Party aged in his mid-20s was apprehended in Islington, north London, on suspicion of harassment and offences under the Online Safety Act.
He has since been released on bail.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK.
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