Reid Hoffman, cofounder and executive chairman of LinkedIn and an early investor in OpenAI, says he used GPT-4 to assist write a book called Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity through AI. Hoffman reckons it’s the primary book cowritten by GPT-4. (Its predecessor ChatGPT has been used to create tons of books.) 

Hoffman got access to the system last summer and has since been writing up his thoughts on different ways the AI model could possibly be utilized in education, the humanities, the justice system, journalism, and more. Within the book, which incorporates copy-pasted extracts from his interactions with the system, he outlines his vision for the long run of AI, uses GPT-4 as a writing assistant to get recent ideas, and analyzes its answers. 

A fast final word … GPT-4 is the cool recent shiny toy of the moment for the AI community. There’s no denying it’s a robust assistive technology that may also help us give you ideas, condense text, explain concepts, and automate mundane tasks. That’s a welcome development, especially for white-collar knowledge employees. 

Nonetheless, it’s notable that OpenAI itself urges caution around use of the model and warns that it poses several safety risks, including infringing on privacy, fooling people into pondering it’s human, and generating harmful content. It also has the potential for use for other dangerous behaviors we haven’t encountered yet. So by all means, get excited, but let’s not be blinded by the hype. In the mean time, there’s nothing stopping people from using these powerful recent  models to do harmful things, and nothing to carry them accountable in the event that they do.  

Deeper Learning

Chinese tech giant Baidu just released its answer to ChatGPT

So. Many. Chatbots. The most recent player to enter the AI chatbot game is Chinese tech giant Baidu. Late last week, Baidu unveiled a recent large language model called Ernie Bot, which may solve math questions, write marketing copy, answer questions on Chinese literature, and generate multimedia responses. 

A Chinese alternative: Ernie Bot (the name stands for “Enhanced Representation from kNowledge IntEgration;” its Chinese name is 文心一言, or Wenxin Yiyan) performs particularly well on tasks specific to Chinese culture, like explaining a historical fact or writing a standard poem. Read more from my colleague Zeyi Yang. 

Even Deeper Learning

Language models may find a way to “self-correct” biases—in the event you ask them to