AIs get better at maths if you tell them to pretend to be in Star Trek

Instructing an AI chatbot to answer questions as if it were in the TV show Star Trek seems to improve its mathematical ability, although no one is exactly sure why. Deepfakes are out of control – is it too late to stop them? People who use chatbots like ChatGPT have already recognised that the quality of outputs can be improved by asking the AI to adopt a certain persona, or by bribing or threatening it.