Free Republic

Chinese propagandists are using ChatGPT to write posts and comments on social media sites — and also to create performance reviews detailing that work for their bosses, according to OpenAI researchers. The use of the company's artificial intelligence chatbot to create internal documents, as well as by another Chinese operation to create marketing materials promoting its work, comes as China is ramping up its efforts to influence opinion and conduct surveillance online. "What we're seeing from China is a growing range of covert operations using a growing range of tactics," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's intelligence and investigations team,...

Gen Z thinks they’ve figured out a dead giveaway that someone has used ChatGPT — and it might surprise you. The em dash (—) is punctuation loved by writers everywhere, functioning like a comma, colon or a pair of parentheses. It can be used to sum up information at the end of a sentence, encase supplementary information within a sentence, emphasize a point or expand upon something that comes before it, according to Merriam-Webster. But according to Gen Z, the dash is actually a so-called “ChatGPT hyphen.” The phenomenon started gaining attention online after podcasters Daisy Reed and Sapna Rao,...

…Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it. It’s called a blue book. … All of which explains how a paper company in Pennsylvania has unexpectedly found itself on the front lines of the classroom AI wars. Most blue books for sale in campus bookstores and on Amazon for 23 cents apiece are made by Roaring Spring...

A senior at Northeastern University filed a formal complaint and demanded a tuition refund after discovering her professor was secretly using AI tools to generate notes. The professor later admitted to using several AI platforms and acknowledged the need for transparency. The incident highlights growing student concerns over professors using AI, a reversal of earlier concerns from professors worried that students would use the technology to cheat. Some students are not happy about their professor’s use of AI. One college senior was so shocked to learn her teacher was using AI to help him create notes that she lodged a...

The security camera in the elevator OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji used to go to his apartment for the last time was unplugged, his family claim. The tech prodigy, 26, was found dead on November 26 only a month after revealing the company’s dubious methods of training ChatGPT. Balaji was found next to his bathroom door with a gunshot wound to the head and blood all over part of his apartment in San Francisco’s Mint Hill neighborhood. His parents, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy, insist he couldn’t have killed himself, and have shared security camera video of the last time he...

By now, most North Carolinians are at least somewhat familiar with Generative AI (GenAI). As tech journalist George Lawton explains, GenAI “uses sophisticated algorithms to organize large, complex data sets into meaningful clusters of information in order to create new content, including text, images and audio, in response to a query or prompt.” It is the foundation of numerous platforms, including Open AI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E, as well as Google’s Gemini. And it is either a bane or a boon, depending on one’s perspective—especially, perhaps, in the field of education. Since OpenAI publicly released ChatGPT-3.5 in November 2022, students have...

It's over Freepers...

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has introduced Grok-3, the latest iteration of its chatbot, as it looks to compete with Chinese AI firm DeepSeek, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and Alphabet's Google. Grok-3 debut comes at a critical moment in the AI arms race, just days after DeepSeek unveiled its powerful open-source model and as Musk moves aggressively to expand xAI's influence. The chatbot is being rolled out immediately to Premium+ subscribers on X, the social media platform owned by Musk. xAI is also launching a new subscription tier, SuperGrok, for users accessing the chatbot via its mobile app and Grok.com website....

Opinion As AI continues to evolve, it is crucial to maintain clear boundaries between machine intelligence and human cognition In an era increasingly defined by artificial intelligence (AI), a curious psychological phenomenon has emerged -- humans are anthropomorphising AI tools. From virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa to large language models like ChatGPT, people often ascribe human-like emotions, intentions and even personalities to these systems. While this tendency may seem benign or even endearing, it has profound implications for society, ethics, and the way we perceive technology. By giving AI tools human-like names, voices and personalities, developers create a sense...

OpenAI has claimed it found evidence suggesting that DeepSeek used distillation, a technique that extracts data from larger models to train smaller ones. OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, which cost over $100 million to train, is an example of a large and complex AI system.OpenAI has raised serious concerns about Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, suspecting the company of using its data to train its own models. DeepSeek has gained significant attention for its cost-effective AI solutions, which are seen as strong competitors to OpenAI’s offerings. Following this, OpenAI and its partner Microsoft are now investigating whether DeepSeek used OpenAI’s API to integrate...

CNBC asked industry experts for their views on DeepSeek, and how it actually compares to OpenAI, creator of viral chatbot ChatGPT, which sparked the AI revolution.

Ayrin’s love affair with her A.I. boyfriend started last summer. While scrolling on Instagram, she stumbled upon a video of a woman asking ChatGPT to play the role of a neglectful boyfriend. “Sure, kitten, I can play that game,” a coy humanlike baritone responded. Ayrin watched the woman’s other videos, including one with instructions on how to customize the artificially intelligent chatbot to be flirtatious. “Don’t go too spicy,” the woman warned. “Otherwise, your account might get banned.” Ayrin was intrigued enough by the demo to sign up for an account with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. ChatGPT, which now...

He built the world’s fastest car. He sends starships to space faster – and cheaper – than NASA. But what the world’s richest man is planning at a remote facility in Memphis may be his greatest achievement to date. Recently, earth’s most powerful billionaire revealed a giant AI supercomputer 10 times more powerful than the technology used to create ChatGPT. Some are even calling it a “ChatGPT killer.” The crazy part? He has plans to double its power in a matter of weeks … and double it again by this summer. It’s the new pinnacle of AI technology. World-famous venture...

OpenAI is giving users a new way to talk to its viral chatbot: 1-800-CHATGPT. By dialing the U.S. number (1-800-242-8478) or messaging it via WhatsApp, users can access an “easy, convenient, and low-cost way to try it out through familiar channels,” OpenAI said Wednesday. At first, the company said callers will get 15 minutes free per month. The news follows a barrage of updates from OpenAI as part of a 12-day release event. The most notable announcement was the official rollout of Sora, OpenAI’s buzzy AI video-generation tool. OpenAI recently hired its first chief marketing officer, indicating plans to spend...

The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities. The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them...

In an bizarre twist, a Stanford University expert who studies misinformation appears to have created some of his own — while under oath.

A study by the University of Pittsburgh reveals that AI-generated poetry has been rated higher than poems written by humans. In the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon lies the burial site of William Shakespeare. And right now, you can bet the Bard is spinning in grave like a rotisserie chicken. Similarly, in Heptonstall graveyard, Sylvia Plath is most probably swivelling, repeating her line “If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed” from "The Bell Jar". What’s behind the unwarranted gyrating from the beyond? Well, a new study in the US has found that readers can’t tell the difference...

If all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players, where does that leave non-human figures, like artificial intelligence chatbots? As it turns out, A.I. can hold its own against humans—even the Bard himself—when it comes to writing poetry. A.I. chatbots can imitate famous poets like William Shakespeare well enough to fool many human readers, according to a new paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. In addition, many study participants actually preferred the chatbot’s poetry over the works of renowned writers. Researchers asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.5 to generate poems in the style of well-known authors,...

A small study found ChatGPT outdid human physicians when assessing medical case histories, even when those doctors were using a chatbot. Dr. Adam Rodman, an expert in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, confidently expected that chatbots built to use artificial intelligence would help doctors diagnose illnesses. He was wrong. Instead, in a study Dr. Rodman helped design, doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot. And, to the researchers’ surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors. “I was shocked,” Dr. Rodman...

A grad student in Michigan received a threatening response during a chat with Google's AI chatbot Gemini. In a back-and-forth conversation about the challenges and solutions for aging adults, Google's Gemini responded with this threatening message: "This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please." The 29-year-old grad student...