Some call it a mirage, other call it AGI
GPT-4: Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence in Machine Learning and Other Social Networks – A Conversation with Bubeck and Spiegel
Bubeck and other AI researchers at Microsoft were inspired to wade into the debate by their experiences with GPT-4. A few weeks after the system was plugged into Bing and its new chat feature was launched, the company released a paper claiming that in early experiments, GPT-4 showed “sparks of artificial general intelligence.”
That night, Bubeck got up, went to his computer, and asked GPT-4 to draw a unicorn using TikZ, a relatively obscure programming language for generating scientific diagrams. Bubeck was using a version of GPT-4 that only worked with text, not images. The model presented him with a code that made a crude image from squares, circles, and triangles. It was obvious to Bubeck that the elements of such a creature needed to be grasped. “Something new is happening here,” he says. “Maybe for the first time we have something that we could call intelligence.”
The authors presented a scattering of examples in which the system performed tasks that appear to reflect more general intelligence, significantly beyond previous systems such as GPT-3. The examples show that unlike most previous AI programs, GPT-4 is not limited to a specific task but can turn its hand to all sorts of problems—a necessary quality of general intelligence.
Scientists who study aspects of human intelligence say that GPT-4 differs from our own in important ways. The models have an tendency to make things up, but that divergence goes deeper. Millions of people are using technology every day and companies are betting on it, so it’s a mystery.
My AI is also becoming a more integral part of Snapchat. It will now be added to group chats with a symbol, and people can change their look and name with a custom Bitmojiavatar. In addition, My AI can now recommend AR filters to use in Snapchat’s camera or places to visit from the app’s map tab. And Snap plans to soon let people visually message My AI and receive generated responses; an example shown during the company’s annual conference today showed a photo of tomatoes in a garden, prompting the bot to respond with a generated image of gazpacho soup.
“Just based on the way that they work, I think they’re much more suited to creative tasks,” Spiegel says of generative AI bots. “And some of the things that make them so creative are also the things that make them not so great at recalling specific information.”
Spiegel remains tight-mouthed on the impact of My Artificial intelligence on its advertising business, which has faced a number of growth challenges. He acknowledges the possibility of using my artificial intelligence to help with ad targeting but doesn’t elaborate further, indicating possible developments in the near future.
The majority of the interactions with My AI have been positive despite the problematic ones. He says that they found that 98.5% of My Artificial Intelligence replies conformed to community guidelines.
There’s a debate raging in the AI industry about whether companies should anthropomorphize chatbots with human personas. According to Spiegel, the ability to change My AI’s name and customize its appearance was one of the top requests from early users. That tells me that human desire to personalize things, and make them feel like they are their own.
As for the broader concerns regarding the potential harm of generative AI, Spiegel offers an optimistic perspective: “When I compare this to almost any other technology that has been invented in the last 20 years, it’d be hard to name one where people have been more thoughtful about the way it’s being implemented and rolled out.”
