The Lost Hard Drive Worth Millions & Toxic AI Chatbots with Jag Sharma, Felina Tan and Jason Kapadia - Episode 27
What happens when AI amplifies the most toxic traits of humanity?
The racist, anti-semetic and inflammatory views being spewed from Meta’s new chatbot hold a huge mirror to the sources on which it was trained, and poses a question over the role a chatbot should play.
We dive into this sensitive topic on Disconnected this week, along with the latest on possibly the world’s most valuable hard drive to find its way into landfill, DALL-E 2’s incredible AI artistry, and much more.
This episode of Disconnected covers:
The hard drive lost to landfill worth millions in bitcoin
Meta’s latest chatbot and its shocking opinions
DALL-E 2’s incredible use of AI and its impact on artistry
How vital it is to consider the human input to AI systems
Whether Snap’s new parental controls can really work
The campaign to Make Instagram Instagram Again
Episode Highlights:
“Almost 10 years ago, in Newport, South Wales, James Howells threw away a hard drive and forgot that it had Bitcoin on it, and it had access to his Bitcoin account through that hard drive. Today, the amount of bitcoin that he can access through that hard drive is worth an estimated 184 million US dollars.” - 2:00 - Jag Sharma
“It'd be amazing if it's still intact. Who knows what other kinds of magnetic bits and bobs will be lying on top of the hard drive. If they find the hard drive, but it's wiped - there'll be so much heartbreak that could be involved in the story.” - 7:45 - Jason Kapadia
“ESG has suddenly become like a massive, massive topic. I want him to follow through with his plans when he gets the money, if he gets the money, but he could also be cheeky. If he gets back that hard drive, and doesn't sign any legal contracts with the council, he might just say ‘See ya’, and then leave Newport for good. ” - 10:40 - Felina Tan
“Meta’s BlenderBot 3 AI chatbot says you can talk to it about everything from food, music and sports to politics and religion. It’s causing controversy by being racist, denying the US election results, and even Facebook-hating, saying things like ‘Facebook has made billions selling user data without consent’.” - 12:25 - Jason Kapadia
“I just can't believe they set it live without stringent QA, with rules and convention setup like the Google LaMDA. That one was so intellectual, so poised and so articulate. This one, it's like speaking to Trump really.” - 14:45 - Felina Tan
“They'll build the bot with good intention, but they won't think that if you tell someone from a random town in a random country, chat with this chatbot, the very human urge of saying something silly to it, and trying to teach it something bad won’t be considered. There’s a naivety of assuming that everyone out there is in it for the tech, some people are in it just because they work nine hours, they're bored and see this as part of their entertainment.” - 18:45 - Jag Sharma
“Do you think that chatbots should have opinions? Should it be more fact based, like it could look up sources of information that are known to be trustworthy and spew out that data instead? Should it just be able to go anywhere on the internet? Maybe one of its data sources was Reddit or Facebook comments - is it really wise to have that?” - 23:35 - Jason Kapadia
“Tools like DALL-E 2 are obviously the beginning of seeing AI tools take over certain roles in the creative world. I don't think artists need to be really scared about this tool replacing their whole job, but it’s an additive tool. I can see it really working well with creating concepts.” - 29:45 - Jason Kapadia
“Obviously, it's a good step, it helps parents have more trust in the Snapchat platform. But the thing is, I know my kids are smart. They've created so many Roblox accounts I have no idea about, and I know they could just easily do the same with Snapchat, right? They’d just create another account if they wanted to talk to someone that they shouldn't.” - 37:00 - Jason Kapadia
“It's too much, there's too much going on in Instagram, and they just need to scale back and keep it simple. I get that the social media landscape is very competitive, but just stay true to what you are Instagram. Instagram should just be Instagram.” - 45:25 - Felina Tan
Links & references:
Jag Sharma:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagsharma
https://www.instagram.com/jagsharma/
Felina Tan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/felinagabrielletan/
Jason Kapadia:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkapadia/
https://www.instagram.com/jasonkapadia/