geoff: In the coming weeks and
months we will be exploring
artificial intelligence and how
it is changing the way we live
and work.
Stephanie sy kicks off our
series, the ai frontier, with a
look at new to is getting
attention and sparking concern
over their ability to produce
original work, ranging from
college-level essays to art.
Stephanie: A chat box that can
mimic human intelligence, and
create poetry?
I had to try it.
Write a haiku about a tabby cat.
Here's what came back.
"Soft fur, brushed by breeze,
tabby cat basks in the sun,
purrs of contentment."
Not bad.
There's also an image generator
that can compose and manipulate
pictures with a few key words.
A tabby cat sleeping on the
beach, wearing a fedora, as an
oil pastel.
A site that writes and debugs
programming code for you, or a
video-generating tool.
>> Hi.
I'm Anna.
I'm an A.I. Avatar created
entirely by artificial
intelligence.
Stephanie: It's part of the rise
of generative A.I., a branch of
artificial intelligence that
enables computer programs to
create original content.
>> Let's see how good of a
college essay chat gpt can
write.
Stephanie: This tool, from the
San francisco-based company open
ai, is chat gpt, and can "Write"
essays.
>> Take a look at a couple of
these sentences, starting from
the top.
"Computer science has always
been a fascinating field to me.
From the moment I learned about
computers --"
Stephanie: And children's books.
Last month, design manager
ammaar reshi used chat gpt and
text-to-image program midjourney
to create his book, "Alice and
sparkle."
Here's how it works.
To create new content, these
programs are trained on datasets
of existing content that hold
text, images, video files, or
even code scraped from the
Some artists say this amounts to
appropriating their work without
permission.
>> I do hyper realistic
drawings.
Stephanie: Including south
African artist jono dry.
>> This scares me.
It makes a huge part of my
practice somewhat redundant.
>> Hey, artists!
If you've wondering if A.I. Has
been using your art to train
itself, I figured out where to
look.
Stephanie: Illustrator carlianne
tipsey suggested artists go to
the site haveibeentrained.com to
see if their artwork was used in
training popular text-to-image
programs.
>> I personally found my book
cover on there, and a lot of
stuff from my favorite artists.
Stephanie: And last month,
artists protested the portfolio
site artstation for featuring
a.I.-generated art on its page.
This new wave of sophisticated
A.I. Tools is raising some
tricky ethical questions, as
well as some big concerns about
topics such as the future of
human labor.
For more on some of these
ramifications, I'm joined by
Kelsey piper.
She's a senior reporter at vox
news who covers artificial
intelligence.
Kelsey piper, thank you so much
for joining the newshour.
I know this is a tricky topic,
but what strikes me as the most
new about some of these A.I.
Platforms is that we're no
longer just talking about
artificial intelligence.
We seem to be talking about
artificial imagination.
Is that how you see this new
breakthrough?
Kelsey: Yeah.
I think a few years ago, there
was something a lot of people
would say about A.I., which is,
maybe they will replace some
machines and automation, and
learn how to do lots of manual
work that humans can do.
But they'll never write poetry.
They'll never play great chess,
they'll never tell good stories.
And so one of the things that's
been astonishing about the
recent breakthroughs in A.I. Is
that long before A.I. Has
learned how to clean out a
toilet or put together a fast
food order, it has figured out
how to write poetry, how to draw
beautiful artwork, how to riff
off Shakespeare.
It's not the direction many
people expected A.I. To take.
Stephanie: And I think it's
created a lot of anxiety.
Is that what you sense when you
talk to artists, and people who
feel that their work is somehow
being not only appropriated but
threatened, even replaced?
Kelsey: So I think that any
industry that sees itself start
to be automated is going to be
sort of appalled and frustrated
at people losing good jobs that
were able to support them being
replaced with computers.
But I think a couple things have
made it worse.
One of those is that it happened
so fast.
We went from having no a.I.'s
that could do meaningful,
beautiful images, to having a
ton of them from different
companies, including some open
source ones that anybody could
go online and play with at any
time, you know, for free, or for
a very small price.
So that's just an overnight
shift.
And then, I think the other
thing is that artists take pride
in their craft.
They don't think of it as just a
job.
They think of it as like an
expression of their
individuality and their style,
and who they are as people.
And so, of course, it's a little
galling to have an A.I. System
that can just do it all, and
copy your style without any need
for you.
Stephanie: So this app, this
application, this tool that's
been created, chat gpt, it's
gotten incredibly popular,
incredibly fast.
Who's using it?
Is it just people having fun, or
are there real world
ramifications?
I mean, for example, does it
become irrelevant to be able to
write a college essay now?
Kelsey: Yeah, so I think the
college essay is certainly in
trouble, because chatbots can
put together, I would say it is
not quite at the peak of human
ability.
It is not yet writing something
that is, like, as great as a
talented human who's dedicated
and working hard, but it can
write something as good as your
average 18 year old who's kind
of phoning it in a little bit.
And that means that it is, you
know, writing things that are
indistinguishable from many
college student essays, and that
has a lot of professors sort of
reeling and asking themselves,
how do we do assignments that
aren't going to be trivially
cheated on?
Stephanie: When I tried chat
gpt, what strikes me is that it
can do, uniquely, what I thought
was a uniquely human thing of
bs'ing. A serious question,
though.
What does its sophistication,
its ability to do that, say
about the future of A.I. And
what we're looking at?
Kelsey: Yeah, I think that's a
great question, because the key
thing here is that four or five
years ago, people were first
coming out with the earliest
language models using these
generative techniques that could
produce text.
And they weren't very good.
They were kind of stilted.
They were maybe writing it like
a middle school level, not a
college level.
They would make up a lot of
stuff, and they didn't seem to
have a good way of telling
whether the things they were
saying were true.
And over the course of just a
couple of years, we have vastly
improved the quality of these
programs.
And now, they're writing at a
college level, and they're
clever, and they bluff and they
make things up.
But they can also be pretty
accurate when they're prompted
to be pretty accurate.
So where is that taking us,
when in a few years, maybe we do
have something that replaces my
job as a journalist.
Maybe we do have systems that
can tell you what you want to
hear in incredibly convincing
length, at any time.
And then there's the question
of, who decides what those A.I.
Systems tell everybody, and how
do we train those A.I. Systems,
such that they are, you know, on
humanity's side, helping us
understand the world better?
Instead of, right now I would
argue they're kind of trained to
appease us.
They're trained to say what they
think we want to hear.
And there's something scary
about the idea of introducing
these immensely powerful,
immensely persuasive systems to
the world, with a mandate that's
as limited as, just say what
will make people happy with you.
Stephanie: Absolutely
fascinating.
Kelsey, thank you for joining
the newshour.