Amidst all the talk and popularity of AI and ChatGPT-like products, keep one thing in mind:
Humans screen, and influence, ALL of the content AI is using for answers. Teach it what to look for, consider, and compile. It's like how search engines optimize your result based on keywords content users provide (a more open approach), or who pays the browser more to show up first (not as open). All need income to exist. Follow the money.
This is why there are some people and groups already creating their own versions of AI that slant towards what they want others to believe. Who? The Republican National Party in America and Elon Musk to name two.
Like everything else in life, be aware of your source.
Think of it as dictionaries from different providers. There are truly open-sourced dictionaries, focusing on generally held fact. Then there are ones whose content is based by religious, political, ethnic or other social bias perspectives. Some are transparent about their bias. Others are not.
One more example. I run my writings through three very popular, mainstream products to check spelling, grammar and composition: MS Word, Google Docs, and ProWritingAid. None of them agree and find everything. I have to rely on my final assessment.
And then there's this, from a recent New York Times article by By Stuart A. Thompson, Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers on the expanding use of AI and some folk's belief that the information is "reliable":
In the United States, Brave, a browser company whose chief executive has sowed doubts about the Covid-19 pandemic and made donations opposing same-sex marriage, added an A.I. bot to its search engine this month that was capable of answering questions. At times, it sourced content from fringe websites and shared misinformation.
Brave’s tool, for example, wrote that “it is widely accepted that the 2020 presidential election was rigged,” despite all evidence to the contrary.
“We try to bring the information that best matches the user’s queries,” Josep M. Pujol, the chief of search at Brave, wrote in an email. “What a user does with that information is their choice. We see search as a way to discover information, not as a truth provider.”
Be open, be curious, and reconcile to be your best self.
