Computer
Chatbots And Open Ai Sometimes Make Things Up. Is AI’s Hallucination Problem Fixable?
Spend enough time with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots; they’ll tell you to lie in no time.
It’s now a challenge for every business, organization, and high school student trying to get a generative AI system to produce documents and get work done. It’s been described as hallucination, confabulation, or just plain making things up. Some people use it for high-risk jobs, such as counseling, researching, and writing legal pleadings.
“I don’t think there’s any model today that doesn’t suffer from some hallucination,” said Daniela Amodei, co-founder and president of Anthropic, which created the chatbot Claude 2.
“They’re really just sort of designed to predict the next word,” said Amodei. “As a result, there will be a rate at which the model does that incorrectly.”
Anthropic, OpenAI, and other prominent creators of AI systems known as large language models aim to improve their accuracy.
It remains to be seen how long this will take and whether they will ever be good enough to securely provide medical advice.
“This isn’t fixable,” said Emily Bender, a linguistics professor and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington. “It’s inherent in the mismatch between technology and proposed use cases.”
Anthropic, OpenAI, and other prominent creators of AI systems known as large language models aim to improve their accuracy.
Much depends on the dependability of generative AI technologies. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, it will add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the global economy. Chatbots are only one component of this frenzy, including technologies capable of creating fresh images, videos, music, and computer code. Almost all of the technologies have a linguistic component.
Google is already pitching a news-writing AI solution to news organizations where precision is critical. The Associated Press is also looking into using the technology as part of a collaboration with OpenAI, which is paying for access to a portion of the AP’s text archive to improve its AI systems.
Ganesh Bagler, a computer scientist, has been working with India’s hotel management colleges for years to get AI systems, including a ChatGPT predecessor, to generate recipes for South Asian delicacies, such as unique variants of rice-based biryani. A single “hallucinated” component might mean the difference between a delicious and inedible meal.
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited India in June, a professor at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi had some questions.
“I guess hallucinations in ChatGPT are still acceptable, but when a recipe comes out hallucinating, it becomes a serious problem,” Bagler remarked, rising in a full campus auditorium to address Altman on the New Delhi leg of the American tech executive’s world tour.
“What’s your take on it?” Bagler eventually inquired.
Altman showed hope if a firm commitment was needed.
“I think we’ll get the hallucination problem a lot better,” Altman said. “It will take us a year and a half, if not two years.” That sort of thing. But we won’t be discussing these at that point. There is a trade-off between originality and precision; the model must learn when you want one or the other.”
However, some specialists who have studied the technology, such as University of Washington linguist Bender, believe there needs to be more than these advancements.
According to Bender, a language model is a system for “modeling the likelihood of different strings of word forms” given some written data on which it has been trained.
It’s how spell checkers know when you’ve typed the erroneous term. It also powers machine translation and transcription services by “smoothing the output to look more like typical text in the target language,” according to Bender. Many individuals rely on a variant of this technique when they utilize the “autocomplete” option in text messages or emails.
The latest generation of chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude 2, and Google’s Bard, attempt to take it a step further by producing entire new passages of text, but according to Bender, they’re still just selecting the most likely next word in a string.
Language models are “designed to make things up” when used to generate text. “They only do that,” Bender explained. They are skilled in imitating writing styles such as legal contracts, television scripts, and sonnets.
“However, because they only ever make things up, the fact that the text they have extruded happens to be interpretable as something we deem correct is by chance,” Bender explained. “Even if they can be tuned to be right more of the time, they will still have failure modes — and the failures will most likely be in cases where a person reading the text is less likely to notice, because they are more obscure.”
According to Shane Orlick, the company’s president, these inaccuracies are relatively minor for marketing agencies who use Jasper AI to help them write pitches.
“Hallucinations are actually an added bonus,” stated Orlick. “We have customers who tell us all the time about how it came up with ideas — how Jasper created takes on stories or angles that they would never have thought of themselves.”
To provide its customers with an array of AI language models tailored to their needs, the Texas-based business collaborates with partners, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Facebook parent Meta. It may deliver Anthropic’s model to someone concerned about accuracy, while someone concerned about the confidentiality of their private source data may receive a different model, according to Orlick.
Orlick admitted that he understands hallucinations are difficult to treat. He expects corporations like Google, which he argues must maintain a “really high standard of factual content” for its search engine, to invest significant time and resources in finding answers.
“I think they have to fix this problem,” Orlick remarked. “They must address this.” So it’ll never be perfect, but it’ll improve over time.
Techno-optimists, like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have predicted a bright future.
“I’m optimistic that, over time, AI models can be taught to distinguish fact from fiction,” Gates wrote in a July blog post about the societal implications of AI.
He noted OpenAI’s 2022 paper as an example of “promising work on this front.” Recently, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich announced the development of a mechanism to detect and automatically eliminate some, but not all, of ChatGPT’s hallucinated content.
Even Altman, who markets the items for various purposes, relies on something other than the models to be accurate when looking for information.
“I probably trust the answers that come out of ChatGPT the least of anyone on Earth,” Altman joked to the audience at Bagler’s University.
SOURCE – (AP)
Computer
Actor Ian McKellen, 85, Is In ‘Good Spirits’ And Expected To Recover From Fall Off Stage In London
LONDON — Actor Ian McKellen is expected to recover fully after falling from a London stage during a fight scene and being hospitalized, according to producers.
According to a representative for the Noel Coward Theatre production, McKellen, 85, was in “good spirits” after medics indicated a scan showed he was likely to recover completely following his fall on Monday night.
Ian Mckellen | AP news Image
Actor Ian McKellen, 85, Is In ‘Good Spirits’ And Expected To Recover From Fall Off Stage In London
According to producers, McKellen’s Tuesday performance was canceled, but he was anticipated to return to the stage on Wednesday.
The stage and screen veteran, who played Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” movie, yelled out in pain following the fall, according to a BBC correspondent at the theatre.
McKellen was cast as the rogue John Falstaff in “Player Kings,” a Robert Icke-directed dramatization of William Shakespeare’s two “Henry IV” history plays.
Ian Mckellen | AP news Image
Actor Ian McKellen, 85, Is In ‘Good Spirits’ And Expected To Recover From Fall Off Stage In London
McKellen lost his balance and fell off the stage in a scene with Toheeb Jimoh’s Prince Hal and Samuel Edward-Cook’s Henry Percy, which surprised the audience.
“Sir Ian seemed to trip as he moved downstage to take a more active part in the scene,” audience member Paul Critchley told the PA news agency, describing it as a surprise. “He picked up momentum as he moved downstage which resulted in him falling off the stage directly in front of the audience.”
Staff and two medics in the audience assisted the actor, according to a statement from the theatre.
The theatre was evacuated, and the play was canceled.
Ian McKellen | AP News Image
Actor Ian McKellen, 85, Is In ‘Good Spirits’ And Expected To Recover From Fall Off Stage In London
McKellen, who played Magneto in the “X-Men” films, is a well-known Shakespearean actor in Britain, having performed in Richard III, Macbeth, and King Lear.
He has received a Tony Award (for “Amadeus”), six Olivier Awards, and nominations for two Academy Awards, five Emmys, and several BAFTA awards.
SOURCE – (AP)
Aegis Space Law is providing a free online Space Regulatory Calculator to help US businesses negotiate the complex regulatory landscape.
The Space Regulatory Calculator, which was unveiled on June 4, is intended to assist early-stage space companies in complying with space-related regulations issued by the Commerce Department, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the State Department.
“Aegis works with a lot of space startups,” Bailey Reichelt, Aegis Space Law’s partner and co-founder, told SpaceNews via email. “The common denominator is that they don’t consider regulations as something to plan for until they have the engineering and financing in place. Unfortunately, regulatory timelines can be significantly longer than other timelines.”
Reichelt, who developed the Space Regulatory Calculator with Aegis colleague Will Lewis, advises founders to consider regulatory permission as soon as they start designing space technology and seeking funds “to maximize the chances of that business succeeding.”
Costly mistakes
Failure to address regulations early in the planning process might result in costly and time-consuming mistakes. For example, a satellite company may choose a foreign antenna array based on its cost and ground-station compatibility, unaware that the operating frequency would entail “a lengthy and expensive regulatory burden,” Reichelt said.
Furthermore, federal acquisition regulations governing current contracts may prohibit the use of foreign-sourced components.
“This kind of setback happens all the time when you have no idea what regulations apply to you,” Reichelt stated.
Legal Advice
Traditionally, space corporations used attorneys to identify which restrictions related to their operations. Many new space enterprises cannot afford “the sophisticated legal advice required to navigate this many agencies,” Reichelt stated.
“This leaves companies vulnerable to missteps that can cost time and money.” Mistakes in regulatory compliance can potentially jeopardize the firm’s or mission’s viability, she said.
It is “entirely unreasonable for a company with no cash flow to spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers before they even have paid employees,” Reichelt stated.
“If we want the space industry to prosper, and the United States’ technological sector to continue leading innovation globally, we must lower legal and regulatory hurdles across the board.
The Space Law Calculator is intended to assist entrepreneurs in determining what kind of licenses and permissions they will require, how long the approval process will typically take, and what costs they will incur to assure regulatory compliance.
“A small business looking to launch its first satellite, for example, would see, among other things, that it may need to plan at least two years in advance to ensure required licenses are obtained prior to launch,” according to the announcement.
Aegis attorneys want to update the Space Regulatory Calculator when regulations change.
Attorneys from Aegis Space Law in Washington contributed to the formation of the nonprofit Association of Commercial Space Professionals. Additionally, Aegis attorneys teach at the Association’s Space Regulatory Bootcamp.
By Debra Werner
Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She… More by Debra Werner
NEW YORK — The Associated Press was informed by Live Nation executives that Jennifer Lopez has canceled her 2024 North American tour.
They said, “Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family, and close friends.”
Jennifer Lopez | NBC News Image
Jennifer Lopez Cancels Summer Tour: ‘I Am Completely Heartsick And Devastated’
In support of her first solo album in ten years, “This Is Me… Now,” and its accompanying film, she was scheduled to embark on her first tour in five years.
The tour was supposed to begin in Orlando, Florida on June 26 and end in Houston on August 31.
Jennifer Lopez | AP News Image
Jennifer Lopez Cancels Summer Tour: ‘I Am Completely Heartsick And Devastated’
Those who bought tickets through Ticketmaster will receive an immediate refund, according to a statement from Live Nation.
On her OntheJLo website and newsletter, Lopez addressed the fans with the following statement: “I am completely heartsick and devastated about letting you down.” Please understand that if I didn’t think this was absolutely necessary, I wouldn’t have done it.
Jennifer Lopez | Billboard Image
Jennifer Lopez Cancels Summer Tour: ‘I Am Completely Heartsick And Devastated’
Her successful album “This Is Me… Then” was released twenty years ago, and this year, she released “This Is Me… Now.” According to Lopez, the new record is a “miracle” and “a second chance,” as she told the AP. And I wish I could freeze this instant in time the same way that album did.
SOURCE – (AP)
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