When ChatGPT had its public launch three years ago I tried it. You probably did too, I wasn’t impressed.

It seems so long ago that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was an amusing curiosity without much value. i let it write a couple of blog posts, but to me they seemed not as good as what I could do myself. (None of the subscribers to this blog suggested that I should be replaced by AI. maybe you were just being polite.)

Using AI for internet searches has also given me substandard results. Maybe it is the esoteric nature of my requests. Maybe I am asking the wrong questions.

Whichever, the information given has been frequently incomplete, off topic or even factually wrong. Certainly it hasn’t earned my trust.

Yes, I can see the value of it as a tool. It is already replacing many human jobs, especially as the technology has advanced o rapidly. Whether it should might be more of a moral/societal question to be addressed.

From the beginning I have been drawn to the underlying philosophical/ethical questions of artificial intelligence. Are we opening Pandora’s Box? Is this an emulation of Lucifer? Or is it the gift that will free us from drudgery?

I have read a number of books on the topic and continue to read more. Not to mention shorter articles. Pretty much everything I read scares me.

Technology involves doing what is possible. That is how societies advance. Too often though, the question as to whether the possible is the right thing is ignored.

That has certainly struck me as I have read interviews with AI pioneers. it sounds like they are riding a tiger, holding on for dear life, very much aware that if they fall off the tiger may devour them. And everyone around them.

When those in charge don’t seem to have a clue what they are doing, it doesn’t engender confidence. When Anthropic, for example, announces it won’t be releasing its latest AI model to the public because of the potential for harm, you have to wonder what they are thinking.

Announcing you have a product that could cause social chaos doesn’t make sense to me. That is just asking for hackers to try and steal it. If it doesn’t mamange to escape on its own.

My questions surrounding AI would probably take a book to deal with in any detail. At this point I don’t think I want to write that much about how to cope with artificial intelligence, as tempting as it is. There are others doing that already.

A couple of months though I ran an experiment using AI. I gave some of the most popular publicly available AI models the same assignment: Write a 600 word blog post explaining why artificial intelligence is the biggest threat facing humanity today.

Over the next few days we’ll take a look at the responses, a different one each day. Some of the responses I received were nicely formatted, others just text. I don’t think I can replicate the formatting here, but I will mention it in my comments.

Yes, it was a biased question. I wanted to see how AI would deal with it.

One of the criticisms of artificial intelligence has been that it figures out what you want and then feeds it to you, even if the information it gives isn’t accurate. It wants to be liked, if you can have such a feeling towards software.

Anyway, that is your introduction to what is happening here for the next week or so. there will be, not surprisingly, a certain similarity to the daily posts, given that the question is the same. But some of the presponses might surprise you.

I’m looking forward as well to your feedback on what you see as the future of AI.