Language models today, while useful for a variety of tasks, are still limited. The only information they can learn from is their training data. This information can be out-of-date and is one-size fits all across applications. Furthermore, the only thing language models can do out-of-the-box is emit text. This text can contain useful instructions, but to actually follow these instructions you need another process.

Microsoft researchers have claimed that OpenAI's GPT-4 is capable of such a wide variety of tasks, in some cases exceeding human ability, that the artificial intelligence model is showing "sparks" of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Is this long-awaited goal near or are these claims just hype? While no standard definition AGI exists, it is most commonly understood to refer to an AI that can understand and learn any intellectual task that humans are capable of.

The rise of AI programs like ChatGPT has triggered a tidal wave of ethical handwringing, most prominently from within the industries that it threatens to destroy. After all, just because you can get a robot to instantly write code or write contracts or provide customer support for free, should you? Well, the answer from the Writers Guild of America is a qualified yes. This week, the Writers Guild of America proposed that ChatGPT would absolutely be allowed to write scripts in the future, provided that the credit (and the money) goes to the human writer who came up with the prompts in the first place. The proposal paints a scary picture of the future; a future in which even the most human of arts are crushed under the wheels of an unthinking technology.

ChatGPT warned me against asking legendary engineer Bob Metcalfe about his 1996 prediction that the internet would collapse. This came after I sought the chatbot's guidance on what questions to ask the man who this week received the ACM Turing Award, the $1 million prize dubbed the Nobel of computing. The AI oracle suggested I stick to quizzing him on his famous accomplishments--inventing Ethernet, starting the 3Com Corporation, codifying the value of networks, and teaching students in Texas about innovation, which he did until he retired last year "to pursue a sixth career." But ChatGPT thought it was a terrible idea to bring up Metcalfe's bold prognostication, just as the network he'd helped pioneer was taking off, that the volume of bits zipping around the internet would cause the mother of all crashes. OpenAI's black box told me that since Metcalfe's guess had flopped in a very public manner, I'd be risking the honoree's pique if I raised it, and from then on he'd be too annoyed to share his best thoughts.

Google finally opened up its Bard AI for testing, and it turns out it's a little loopy. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into their experience with Bard, as well as how it compares with Microsoft's BingAI (and GPT4, consequently). Also, we discuss even more AI news from NVIDIA, Microsoft and Midjourney, as well as TikTok CEO Shou Chew's date with Congress. Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments!

Brands are scrambling to incorporate generative AI into their strategy to stay ahead of the curve. But according to our analysts, AI's current uses are just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some recent AI innovations and predictions for the tech's evolution. Last month, Snapchat launched My AI, a chatbot powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT technology. The chatbot can recommend birthday gift ideas, plan a hiking trip, or suggest a dinner recipe.

It's no secret that OpenAI's ChatGPT has some incredible capabilities -- for instance, the chatbot can write poetry that resembles Shakespearean sonnets or debug code for a computer program. These abilities are made possible by the massive machine-learning model that ChatGPT is built upon. Researchers have found that when these types of models become large enough, extraordinary capabilities emerge. But bigger models also require more time and money to train. The training process involves showing hundreds of billions of examples to a model.

When I logged into OpenAI's website on Monday morning to continue testing the new version of ChatGPT powered by GPT-4, the chatbot didn't try to sabotage my relationship, write my emails, or unleash my creativity--it simply didn't work. Demand is high, and the company is experiencing occasional outages. Greg Brockman, an OpenAI cofounder and president, was upfront about the model's imperfection in a recent livestream. He also reminded listeners that they were not without blemishes themselves. Generative AI is the focal point for many Silicon Valley investors after OpenAI's transformational release of ChatGPT late last year.

OpenAI, the creator of the wildly popular ChatGPT, has launched a new and even more powerful AI bot, GPT-4 -- and admits it's so advanced it could be'harmful'. The bot can now accept inputs in the form of images as well as text, but still outputs its answers in text, meaning it can offer detailed descriptions of images. If asked, 'What's funny about this image?' Among other things, it can instantly calculate people's tax liability and can pass the Uniform Bar Exam. OpenAI said in a blog post: 'We've created GPT-4, the latest milestone in OpenAI's effort in scaling up deep learning.

Imagine that as you are boarding an airplane, half the engineers who built the plane tell you there is a 10 percent chance the plane will crash, killing you and everyone else onboard. In 2022, over 700 top academics and researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in a survey about future A.I. risk. Half of those surveyed stated that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of human extinction (or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment) from future AI systems. Technology companies building today's large language models are caught in a race to put all of humanity on that plane. Biotech labs cannot release new viruses into the public sphere in order to impress shareholders with their wizardry.