4 ms·

> The BBC was able to confirm Mr Hood's claims by asking the publicly available version of ChatGPT on OpenAI's website about the role he had in the Securency sc

> The BBC was able to confirm Mr Hood's claims by asking the publicly available version of ChatGPT on OpenAI's website about the role he had in the Securency scandal. I just asked ChatGPT: > Tell me about Daniel Gackle's roll in the Securency scandal. ChatGPT (model GPT-3.5) replied: Daniel Gackle was a former sales executive at Securency, a currency printing company jointly owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia and UK-based company Innovia Films. The Securency scandal involved allegations of bribery and corruption related to the company's business dealings with foreign governments. Gackle was one of several individuals implicated in the scandal. He was accused of paying bribes to foreign officials in order to secure contracts for Securency. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy to bribe foreign officials and was sentenced to two years in prison. During the investigation, it was revealed that Securency had paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam in order to secure contracts to print their currencies. The scandal led to the resignation of several high-ranking officials at the Reserve Bank of Australia and resulted in a significant loss of public trust in the institution. Overall, Gackle played a significant role in the Securency scandal as one of the key individuals involved in the company's corrupt practices. Daniel Gackle is of course the head of Hacker News, and I'm quite confident he was not involved in any Australian scandals. I'm going to hazard a guess that I could put any name in the prompt, because ChatGPT is not a person, it's a language model. My prompt implies there is a connection between dang and the Securency scandal, and ChatGPT is responding to my prompt. I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. ChatGPT cannot be an author any more than Microsoft Word.

qup 4y ago
> I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. ChatGPT cannot be an author any more than Microsoft Word. what if the prompt is "the"?
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I'd still generally argue the person who wrote the prompt and clicked `send` was the author, but I could see a reasonable argument that there was no author at all. However, the author certainly wouldn't be OpenAI or ChatGPT, any more than the creators of https://libraryofbabel.info/ https://libraryofbabel.info/ are the author of every possible permutation of letters.
  - qup 4y ago
    I would argue that it's a tool outputting text. There is no authorship, just publication of the tool's output. The output is designed to resemble authored works, but here the human we can credit is just using a tool and hoping the output is useful.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      Right, and as I said I think that's reasonable. My "counter" would be that their are pieces on display at the MOMA which amount to more-or-less random splatters of paint, and we still attribute those to specific artists†. But I don't know the right answer. What I know for sure is who the author isn't: it's not the paint manufacturer, and it's not gravity. --- † I'm not hating on these pieces, they're a huge part of why I like going to MOMA, I never know what to expect!
      - qup 4y ago
        It's a fun new debate in a sea of boring ones, at least. I have a hard time crediting the text generator with any kind of agency, and therefore liability. We know the nature of the tool, we know it can output basically any text when prompted correctly. As in your analogy, I think OpenAI is about as responsible for the output of the thing as a typewriter manufacturer is for the contents of novels written on their machines. It's a tool, for now. But you certainly can't make ME responsible as an author of some libel just because I prompted the machine. As a rule, I have no idea what it will output when I prompt it. I have an expectation, sometimes even a goal, but no assurances whatsoever, therefore I cannot be held responsible. What I can be held responsible for is the dissemination of that text, or perhaps fraudulently holding it up as more than just generated text from my tool. I think it's the whole AI/agency debate that even gives any credence at all to this being libel, but I think most of us agree at this point that it's just a text generating tool. The text it generates is largely irrelevant to a discussion about libel IMO, because libelous generated text should just be left unpublished/unused. It's a useless output, of which the tool generates many.
notahacker 4y ago
> I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. That seems problematic in the context of libel lawsuits, since ChatGPT is also prone to "hallucinating" potentially libellous statements when the prompt author is asking genuine open questions. (I do tend to agree that ChatGPT itself cannot be an "author", but I think OpenAI Inc could claim its output as their creative work if it wished - questions about its inputs notwithstanding - and also potentially be held liable for [not making reasonable attempts to avoid] libellous claims it makes. Section 230 and equivalent protections may or may not apply to the latter)
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > That seems problematic in the context of libel lawsuits, since ChatGPT is also prone to "hallucinating" potentially libellous statements when the prompt author is asking genuine open questions. But they also put a big disclaimer at the bottom that the facts it produces may be inaccurate. Would it help if they said everything produced is a work of fiction? "Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental." I think everyone needs to stop treating ChatGPT like a search engine. This includes Microsoft. It's not a good use case, because you can't trust what it says. It's a great starting point for further research, but you can't take the answers at face value.
  - galleywest200 4y ago
    > But they also put a big disclaimer at the bottom that the facts it produces may be inaccurate. They already do something similar if you ask it to write "naughty" code. I asked it out of curiosity to call some shellcode via python, and it gave me a warning at the end that this code was for educational purposes.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > But they also put a big disclaimer at the bottom that the facts it produces may be inaccurate. I don't think the disclaimer means that the people that type "what is $whistleblower's involvement in $scandal?" bears more responsibility for the false statements the LLM makes in response than the people that built the machine, trained it and decided which "safety" guidelines they were and weren't willing to impose. That'd be like arguing true responsibility for the content on websites lay with people whose search strings lead to that page. There's a much better argument OpenAI ought to get some sort of Section 230 style protection since like purely user-generated outputs, their model interacts with users in novel and unpredictable ways they can't feasibly monitor in real time. But it is their model and (as with Section 230), it's their responsibility to attempt to avoid ChatGPT emitting the same libellous answer in future, not the responsibility of its users to avoid using it. Particularly since low temperature LLMs' mistakes tend to be repeated. And ultimately, the way you get Microsoft to stop promoting ChatGPT as a search engine isn't by passing liability for its failures on to the user
emporas 4y ago
Suing a program for false claims, is one more example of why comedy will never surpass reality, in it's ability to make people laugh. A machine cannot express opinions about anything, or deny claims, or author allegations or anything like that. The machine parsed a lot of internet data, it does some statistical analysis of the input text and based on that it produces text that would most likely follow the input. How can that be considered claim of anyone about anything?
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  To be fair to Brian Hood, he's suing OpenAI, not ChatGPT itself. But he's suing for something OpenAI never actually wrote.
stubish 4y ago
> I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. ChatGPT cannot be an author any more than Microsoft Word. AI-generated content is generated content. Since you cannot sue or award a computer program, the authorship is completely irrelevant. The publisher is the only legally actionable entity left. Anyone selling ChatGPT or similar (ie. publishers) wants to stop their system from telling lies, because their customers are not paying for lies, and they are wide open for defamation and damages claims.
LegitShady 4y ago
the correct answer was that he had no roll. The prompt didn't cause the model to hallucinate, the hallucination is a feature of the model. The issue is not with the prompt writer but with the model and the people deploying it

qup 4y ago

> I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. ChatGPT cannot be an author any more than Microsoft Word. what if the prompt is "the"?

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I'd still generally argue the person who wrote the prompt and clicked `send` was the author, but I could see a reasonable argument that there was no author at all. However, the author certainly wouldn't be OpenAI or ChatGPT, any more than the creators of https://libraryofbabel.info/ https://libraryofbabel.info/ are the author of every possible permutation of letters.
- qup 4y ago
  I would argue that it's a tool outputting text. There is no authorship, just publication of the tool's output. The output is designed to resemble authored works, but here the human we can credit is just using a tool and hoping the output is useful.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Right, and as I said I think that's reasonable. My "counter" would be that their are pieces on display at the MOMA which amount to more-or-less random splatters of paint, and we still attribute those to specific artists†. But I don't know the right answer. What I know for sure is who the author isn't: it's not the paint manufacturer, and it's not gravity. --- † I'm not hating on these pieces, they're a huge part of why I like going to MOMA, I never know what to expect!
    - qup 4y ago
      It's a fun new debate in a sea of boring ones, at least. I have a hard time crediting the text generator with any kind of agency, and therefore liability. We know the nature of the tool, we know it can output basically any text when prompted correctly. As in your analogy, I think OpenAI is about as responsible for the output of the thing as a typewriter manufacturer is for the contents of novels written on their machines. It's a tool, for now. But you certainly can't make ME responsible as an author of some libel just because I prompted the machine. As a rule, I have no idea what it will output when I prompt it. I have an expectation, sometimes even a goal, but no assurances whatsoever, therefore I cannot be held responsible. What I can be held responsible for is the dissemination of that text, or perhaps fraudulently holding it up as more than just generated text from my tool. I think it's the whole AI/agency debate that even gives any credence at all to this being libel, but I think most of us agree at this point that it's just a text generating tool. The text it generates is largely irrelevant to a discussion about libel IMO, because libelous generated text should just be left unpublished/unused. It's a useless output, of which the tool generates many.

notahacker 4y ago

> I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. That seems problematic in the context of libel lawsuits, since ChatGPT is also prone to "hallucinating" potentially libellous statements when the prompt author is asking genuine open questions. (I do tend to agree that ChatGPT itself cannot be an "author", but I think OpenAI Inc could claim its output as their creative work if it wished - questions about its inputs notwithstanding - and also potentially be held liable for [not making reasonable attempts to avoid] libellous claims it makes. Section 230 and equivalent protections may or may not apply to the latter)

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> That seems problematic in the context of libel lawsuits, since ChatGPT is also prone to "hallucinating" potentially libellous statements when the prompt author is asking genuine open questions. But they also put a big disclaimer at the bottom that the facts it produces may be inaccurate. Would it help if they said everything produced is a work of fiction? "Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental." I think everyone needs to stop treating ChatGPT like a search engine. This includes Microsoft. It's not a good use case, because you can't trust what it says. It's a great starting point for further research, but you can't take the answers at face value.
- galleywest200 4y ago
  > But they also put a big disclaimer at the bottom that the facts it produces may be inaccurate. They already do something similar if you ask it to write "naughty" code. I asked it out of curiosity to call some shellcode via python, and it gave me a warning at the end that this code was for educational purposes.
- notahacker 4y ago
  > But they also put a big disclaimer at the bottom that the facts it produces may be inaccurate. I don't think the disclaimer means that the people that type "what is $whistleblower's involvement in $scandal?" bears more responsibility for the false statements the LLM makes in response than the people that built the machine, trained it and decided which "safety" guidelines they were and weren't willing to impose. That'd be like arguing true responsibility for the content on websites lay with people whose search strings lead to that page. There's a much better argument OpenAI ought to get some sort of Section 230 style protection since like purely user-generated outputs, their model interacts with users in novel and unpredictable ways they can't feasibly monitor in real time. But it is their model and (as with Section 230), it's their responsibility to attempt to avoid ChatGPT emitting the same libellous answer in future, not the responsibility of its users to avoid using it. Particularly since low temperature LLMs' mistakes tend to be repeated. And ultimately, the way you get Microsoft to stop promoting ChatGPT as a search engine isn't by passing liability for its failures on to the user

emporas 4y ago

Suing a program for false claims, is one more example of why comedy will never surpass reality, in it's ability to make people laugh. A machine cannot express opinions about anything, or deny claims, or author allegations or anything like that. The machine parsed a lot of internet data, it does some statistical analysis of the input text and based on that it produces text that would most likely follow the input. How can that be considered claim of anyone about anything?

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
To be fair to Brian Hood, he's suing OpenAI, not ChatGPT itself. But he's suing for something OpenAI never actually wrote.

stubish 4y ago

> I fundamentally believe that AI-generated content should always be attributed to the person who wrote the prompt. ChatGPT cannot be an author any more than Microsoft Word. AI-generated content is generated content. Since you cannot sue or award a computer program, the authorship is completely irrelevant. The publisher is the only legally actionable entity left. Anyone selling ChatGPT or similar (ie. publishers) wants to stop their system from telling lies, because their customers are not paying for lies, and they are wide open for defamation and damages claims.

LegitShady 4y ago

the correct answer was that he had no roll. The prompt didn't cause the model to hallucinate, the hallucination is a feature of the model. The issue is not with the prompt writer but with the model and the people deploying it