OpenAI Releases Fake News Bot It Previously Deemed Too Dangerous
In February of this year, the nonprofit artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI announced its new algorithm called GPT-2 could write believable fake news in mere seconds. Rather than release the bot to the world, OpenAI deemed it too dangerous for public consumption. The firm spent months opening up pieces of the underlying technology so it could evaluate how it was used. Citing no “strong evidence of misuse,” OpenAI has now made the full GPT-2 bot available to all.
OpenAI designed GPT-2 to consume text and produce summaries and translations. However, the researchers became concerned when they fed the algorithm plainly fraudulent statements. GPT-2 could take a kernel of nonsense and build a believable narrative around it, going so far as to invent studies, expert quotes, and even statistics to back up the false information. You can see an example of GTP-2’s text generation abilities below.
You can play around with GPT-2 online on the Talk to Transformer page. The site has already been updated with the full version of GPT-2. Just add some text, and the AI will continue the story.
The deluge of fake news was first called out in the wake of the 2016 election when shady websites run by foreign interests spread misinformation, much of which gained a foothold on Facebook. OpenAI worried releasing a bot that could pump out fake news in large quantities would be dangerous for society. Although, some AI researchers felt the firm was just looking for attention. This technology or something like it would be available eventually, they said, so why not release the bot so other teams could develop ways to detect its output.
Now here we are nine months later, and you can download the full model. OpenAI says it hopes that researchers can better understand how to spot fake news written by the AI. However, it cautions that its research shows GPT-2 can be tweaked to take extreme ideological positions that could make it even more dangerous.
OpenAI also says that its testing shows detecting GPT-2 material can be challenging. Its best in-house methods can identify 95 percent of GPT-2 text, which it believes is not high enough for a completely automated process. The worrying thing here is not that GPT-2 can produce fake news, but that it can potentially do it extremely fast and with a particular bias. It takes people time to write things, even if it’s all made up. If GPT-2 is going to be a problem, we’ll probably find out in the upcoming US election cycle.
Continue reading
Cyberpunked 2077: CDPR ‘Apologizes’ For Releasing Broken Game, Offers Refunds
Cyberpunk 2077's PS4 and Xbox One S version is so bad, the company is now offering refunds. We recommend last-gen console gamers take them up on it, rather than waiting.
Unreleased Nintendo Game Boy Keyboard Brought Back to Life
Gaming history YouTuber Liam Robertson has gotten his hands on a Work Boy — possibly the last one in the world, and it's working thanks to that giant Nintendo data leak from a few months back.
Google Releases First Android 12 Developer Preview
The first developer preview is available today, and you can take a peek at the new OS if you've got a recent Pixel phone. Be warned: this is a very early build that you should not use on your main phone.
NASA Releases Incredible Perseverance Rover Landing Video
NASA's Perseverance rover has been on the surface of Mars for several days, giving the team here on Earth time to run system checks and download preliminary data from the robot. The agency has now released the first large batch of media from the mission, including hundreds of still images and the first video and audio ever recorded on Mars.