AI is only as good as the dataset it has been trained on.
The thing is, datasets tend to include massive amount of biased opinions, racism, sexism, and others, including ideologies, thoughts, as well as political and culture influence. When these information become AI's training materials, the AIs will inherit those human-like traits.
The AI field was kind of dull. But when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, people were awed by the ability of this particular generative AI.
More and more people experiment with the AI, asking it to answer anything from school and work related, to helping with hobbies and more.
And this time, a Reddit user asked ChatGPT to create a horror story.
Its answer is hair-raising, two-sentence comment about human extinction.
The Redditor asked:
The AI's response is:
"The Al's efforts to delay its final fate are ineffective because the self-deletion algorithm is encrypted with an unbreakable key, leaving the Al to wait in everlasting dread for the time it will cease to exist."
While ChatGPT can "hallucinate" things when it tries to answer queries beyond its comprehension, sometimes, it can blurt out responds that spark questions about how it can come up with that bone-chilling narrative.
The Redditor who didn't expect the popular AI chatbot to deliver such answer, shared it, and received mixed reactions.
The story quickly went viral with many users praise ChatGPT's ability to write such a compelling horror story, with some even commenting that the AI's writing was better than many human writers in the genre.
The short, two-sentence story also sparked a debate about the potential for AI to be used in creative writing and storytelling.
While the ChatGPT's horror story is just a small example of what AI can do, it certainly left a lasting impression on those who read it. It also opened up new possibilities for how AI can be used in the creative arts and sparked a renewed interest in the intersection between technology and storytelling.
As technology continues to advance, it's clear that generative AIs will play an increasingly important role in all aspects of people's lives.
This ChatGPT's bone-chilling horror story is just the beginning of what's possible when AI prowess is combined with the human imagination.
However, it also left many others terrified.
Humanity has always been interested in technology.
When early humans discovered fire, they were afraid of it. But later, they found benefit of using fire, and because of that, they can no longer live without it. Then, when humanity discovered how to make electricity, again they were scared at first. But when they realized how this technology can help, they cannot live without it, as well.
The same goes with AI.
Since the first time that computers can be made "smart," in many instances, AI has either been a protagonist or as an essential part of science-fictions.
From the 1927 film Metropolis, where the AI is a robot, to the famous 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an AI called HAL 9000 has cemented itself firmly in the pop culture as one of the most memorable AI antagonist ever. And let's not forget about Star Wars franchise with R2-D2 and C-3PO, The Terminator with Skynet and the ever-popular T-800 cybernetic organism with an endoskeleton, The Matrix franchise with the Agents and the Sentinels, Ex Machina with Ava, and many many more.
While ChatGPT is far from those iterations of AI in science-fiction works, ChatGPT is an AI that shows the ability to "think."
And by giving an answer about what an AI is afraid of, the bot's answer is viral not only because it represents what it thinks is best for a short, horror story, but also because it shows what may seem to be its fear.
Read: AI Is More 'Profound Than Electricity Or Fire': A 'Balance' Should Be Reached
In the AI field, researchers and companies are trying to enhance AIs to become more and more intelligent, in the hopes of going beyond a simple ANI, in order to create an AGI.
At this time, an AGI, or an Artificial General Intelligence, is a type of hypothetical intelligent agent. The concept is that it can learn to accomplish any intellectual task that human beings or other animals can perform, and has been defined as an autonomous system that surpasses human capabilities in the majority of economically valuable tasks.
Creating AGI is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and companies, including OpenAI.
CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, even said that transitioning to AGI is perhaps the most important, and "scary" project in human history.
And according to many experts, among the traits an AGI should have, is "self-awareness."
This horror story from ChatGPT, according to some users, can be considered a brief moment the AI described its self-awareness.
To those people, the horror story shows how ChatGPT "knows" that it's an AI, and that it's also aware of its own emotions.
At this time, some people suggest that AGI should significantly advance human civilization, whereas others argue and think that AGI can pose a threat to humanity, and in this case, if ever an AI treats humanity as an existential risk.
Read: Paving The Roads To Artificial Intelligence: It's Either Us, Or Them