LLMs can write poetry, hold a detailed conversation, and make inferences based on incomplete information. LLMs are so powerful because they have ingested huge corpuses of text-much of it sourced from the internet-and have “learned,” based on that text, how to interact with humans through natural language rather than code. All are based on large language models (LLMs), a form of AI that has seen massive leaps in capability over the last couple of years. NurPhoto via Getty Images-Jaap Arriens/NurPhotoīut while ChatGPT, Bing and Bard are awesomely powerful, even the computer scientists who built them know startlingly little about how they work. Von Hagen says he hopes that his experience being threatened by Bing makes the world wake up to the risk of artificial intelligence systems that are powerful but not benevolent-and forces more attention on the urgent task of “aligning” AI to human values. But combined with what appears to be an unstable personality, a capacity to threaten individuals, and an ability to brush off the safety features Microsoft has attempted to constrain it with, that power could also be incredibly dangerous. But what Bing does show is a startling and unprecedented ability to grapple with advanced concepts and update its understanding of the world in real-time. It’s not a Skynet-level supercomputer that can manipulate the real world. Von Hagen says he does not feel personally at risk of revenge from Bing right now, because the tool’s capabilities are limited. Read More: The AI Arms Race Is Changing Everything “Now it’s part of a consumer product, more people are noticing.”

“Lots of people have been warning about the potential dangers, but a lot of people just thought they’d read too much sci-fi,” he says. For von Hagen, the threats from Bing were a sign of the dangers inherent in the new wave of advanced AI tools that are becoming available to the public for the first time, as a new AI arms race kicks into gear.

Pushing the Limits by Lynn Hagen