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ChatGPT: the promises, pitfalls and panic
Source: AFP
The excitement around ChatGPT – an easy to use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay or computer code upon request and within seconds – has sent schools into panic and turned Big Tech green with envy.
But behind the headlines, the potential impact of ChatGPT on society remains more complicated and unclear. Here is a closer look at what ChatGPT is (and is not):
Is this a turning point?
It is entirely possible that November’s release of ChatGPT by California company OpenAI will be remembered as a turning point in introducing a new wave of artificial intelligence to the wider public.
What is less clear is whether ChatGPT is actually a breakthrough with some critics calling it a brilliant PR move that helped OpenAI score billions of dollars in investments from Microsoft.
Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta and professor at New York University, believes “ChatGPT is not a particularly interesting scientific advance,” calling the app a “flashy demo” built by talented engineers.
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LeCun, speaking to the Big Technology Podcast, said ChatGPT is void of “any internal model of the world” and is merely churning “one word after another” based on inputs and patterns found on the internet.
“When working with these AI models, you have to remember that they’re slot machines, not calculators,” warned Haomiao Huang of Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
“Every time you ask a question and pull the arm, you get an answer that could be marvelous…or not…The failures can be extremely unpredictable,” Huang wrote in Ars Technica, the tech news website.
Just like Google
ChatGPT is powered by an AI language model that is nearly three years old – OpenAI’s GPT-3 – and the chatbot only uses a part of its capability.
The true revolution is the humanlike chat, said Jason Davis, research professor at Syracuse University.
“It’s familiar, it’s conversational and guess what? It’s kind of like putting in a Google search request,” he said.
ChatGPT’s rockstar-like success even shocked its creators at OpenAI, which received billions in new financing from Microsoft in January.
“Given the magnitude of the economic impact we expect here, more gradual is better,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview to StrictlyVC, a newsletter
“We put GPT-3 out almost three years ago… so the incremental update from that to ChatGPT, I felt like should have been predictable and I want to do more introspection on why I was sort of miscalibrated on that,” he said.
The risk, Altman added, was startling the public and policymakers and on Tuesday his company unveiled a tool for detecting text generated by AI amid concerns from teachers that students may rely on artificial intelligence to do their homework.
What now?
From lawyers to speechwriters, from coders to journalists, everyone is waiting breathlessly where the disruption from ChatGPT will be felt first, with a pay version of the chatbot expected soon.
For now, officially, the first significant application of OpenAI’s tech will be for Microsoft software products.
Though details are scarce, most assume that ChatGPT-like capabilities will turn up on the Bing search engine and in the Office suite.
“Think about Microsoft Word. I don’t have to write an essay or an article, I just have to tell Microsoft Word what I wanted to write with a prompt,” said Davis.
He believes influencers on TikTok and Twitter will be the earliest adopters of this so-called generative AI since going viral requires huge amounts of content and ChatGPT can make the chore almost instantaneous.
This of course raises the specter of disinformation and spamming carried out at an industrial scale.
For now, Davis said the reach of ChatGPT is very limited by computing power, but once this is ramped up, the opportunities and potential dangers will grow exponentially.
And much like the ever imminent arrival of self-driving cars that never quite happens, experts disagree on whether that is a question of months or years.
Ridicule
LeCun said Meta and Google have refrained from releasing AI as potent as ChatGPT out of fear of “ridicule” and backlash.
Quieter releases of language-based bots – like Meta’s Blenderbot or Microsoft’s Tay for example – were quickly shown capable of generating racist or inappropriate content.
Tech giants have to think hard before releasing something “that is going to spew nonsense” and disappoint, he said.
Source: AFP
- Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Kayode Ariwoola was spotted in Abuja on Friday, March 24
- The CJN was seen leaving the Supreme Court in Abuja for the usual Friday prayers amid claims that he is in London with Bola Ahmed Tinubu
- This latest update dismisses the unfounded speculation that Tinubu is trying to buy Ariwoola’s heart as the head of Nigeria’s judiciary
Amid rumours that he was in a private meeting with President-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Kayode Ariwoola has been spotted in Abuja.
CJN Ariwoola, according to Channels TV, was seen on Friday, March 24, leaving the Supreme Court for the Ansar-Ud-Deen Central Mosque in Abuja to observe his prayers.
Source: Twitter
The speculations that Ariwoola is in London with Tinubu are fuelling suspicion that the latter is making smart moves to buy the former’s heart while court cases surrounding the outcome of the presidential election abound.
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Presidential election tribunal: Did Tinubu, CJN Ariwoola meet in UK? Fresh details emerge
Amid several news reports about a meeting between Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu and the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kayode Ariwoola, in the United Kingdom, Ahmed Raji (SAN) has dismissed such claims.
Raji said the reports were false and were an attempt to mar the image of the Supreme Court of Justice.
As reported by the Nigerian Tribune, Raji revealed on Thursday, March 23, that Justice Ariwoola was indeed in the United Kingdom but was there only on medical leave but returned to Nigeria in the early hours of Thursday.
Meanwhile, a series of reports confirmed that Tinubu had left the country on health grounds as well.
Raji said:
“It is in the news since Tuesday evening that Tinubu was travelling to Europe for medical reasons as well as for lesser hajj, further reports indicated that he is in France to meet with his medical doctor, why would somebody now link that to the CJN that has left Nigeria for the UK since Saturday to observe his own medical session and just came back today (Thursday) as meeting?”
Source: Legit.ng
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Jubilation as Court of Appeal gives verdict on PDP’s suit seeking to disqualify Tinubu, Shettima, awards N5m fine
- President-elect Bola Tinubu secured another victory at the Court of Appeal in Abuja on Monday, March 24
- The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had asked the appellate court to disqualify Tinubu and the vice president-elect Kashim Shettima, claiming they were not properly nominated
- However, the court dismissed the suit for lacking in merit and awarded a fine of N5 million against the PDP
FCT, Abuja – The Court of Appeal in Abuja has dismissed a suit by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seeking to disqualify the president-elect, Bola Tinubu and the vice president-elect, Kashim Shettima, from participating in the February 25 presidential election.
In the unanimous judgement delivered by Justice Danlami Senchi, the appellate court dismissed the appeal for lacking merit, Nigerian Tribune reported.
Source: Facebook
Justice Senchi described the appellant, that is the PDP, as a meddlesome interloper, holding that the court cannot be used to perform illegality.
He said the PDP failed to disclose that it has the legal right to institute the action.
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“This appeal is of no merit and it is accordingly dismissed,” the court ruled and awarded a fine of N5 million against the PDP.
2023 presidency: What is the suit about?
The PDP, whose candidate, Atiku Abubakar, came second in the presidential election had contended that the APC candidate, Tinubu, who was declared the winner of the presidential contest, was legally ineligible to participate in the poll.
The party told the court that the manner the APC and Tinubu nominated Shettima as a Vice Presidential candidate for the election, was in gross breach of the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022, as amended.
It claimed Shettima was nominated twice, both for the Vice Presidential position, as well as for the Borno Central Senatorial seat, an action it argued contravened the law.
The PDP had lost the case at the Federal High Court in Abuja before proceeding to the appellate court. Both INEC and APC were equally cited as Respondents in the appeal.
How the APC defended itself against PDP’s suit
Legit.ng gathers that Tinubu and Shettima, through their lawyers challenged the competence of the suit and the jurisdiction of the court to entertain it.
They contended that PDP was bereft of the locus standi (legal right) to institute the action against them.
According to them, no portion of the law conferred on the PDP, the right to dabble into the domestic affair of another political party, especially on the issue of the nomination of its candidates for an election.
The Federal High Court upheld the preliminary objection by Tinubu and Shettima and dismissed the suit for lacking in merit.
Court Orders Atiku, Peter Obi to serve petitions on Tinubu
In another report, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the PDP) and Labour Party (LP) have been granted permission to serve their petitions on Tinubu, Shettima and Kabir Masari through the APC.
The permission was granted alongside that of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
Legit.ng gathers that the petitioners argued before the tribunal that Tinubu, the president-elect, was avoiding their petitions.
Source: Legit.ng
Source: AFP
President Joe Biden laid out a vision of world-leading US-Canadian economic cooperation in a speech to Canada’s parliament Friday, and announced that the giant neighbors had reached a deal on curbing illegal migration.
Standing ovations by Canadian lawmakers punctuated Biden’s roughly half-hour speech in Ottawa that was thick on praise for North American unity — a sentiment matched earlier when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered his own address.
“Americans and Canadians are two peoples, two countries, in my view sharing one heart,” Biden said, getting cheers when he vowed Canada will “always be able to count on the United States.”
Biden signalled a resolution to one irritant in the close relationship, with a deal on managing the growing issue of undocumented migration on their lengthy border.
“The United States and Canada will work together to discourage unlawful border crossings,” he said. The arrangement will see undocumented asylum seekers crossing from the United States into Canada turned back, while Canada will simultaneously expand the pathway for legal entries.
The plan — similar to a crackdown on the much more heavily used US-Mexican border — has been criticized by migrants’ rights activists. However, Biden and Trudeau are both under political pressure to relieve their badly strained immigration systems and Biden said that regardless, “welcoming refugees and asylum seekers is a part of who Canadians and Americans are.”
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Biden opened his speech with a nod to Canadian bilingualism, greeting parliamentarians with “good afternoon” and “bonjour” — joking that this was as far as he’d got in four years of French at school.
And the bonhomie flowed from then on.
Biden laid out a vision of the neighbors being ever more closely bound with the joint goal of building high-tech economies and reinforcing supply chains for things like critical minerals used in electric vehicle manufacturing.
“Canada and the United States can do big things,” he concluded to more cheering. “We’re going to write the future together.”
Trudeau earlier greeted Biden at the parliament building, saying Canada has “no greater friend and ally than the United States” — a message underlined through the gift to Biden of a chocolate bar from Peace by Chocolate, a brand started by Syrian refugees.
NORAD, China, Haiti
Source: AFP
Earlier face-to-face talks between Biden and Trudeau covered a range of areas where both sides are pushing for improvements.
The US government has been pressuring Canada to increase its defense spending, which in 2022 was just 1.33 percent of GDP. This is scheduled to rise to 1.59 percent from 2026, but that’s still well below the NATO alliance requirement of minimum two percent of GDP spending.
A joint statement said that Biden and Trudeau agreed to modernizing their countries’ joint air defense alliance, NORAD, with Canada putting billions of dollars into improved radar and fighter aircraft infrastructure.
A revamped NORAD will “defend against emerging threats to our air and sea space and compete with China and Russia for years to come,” the statement said.
The two leaders reaffirmed support for pro-Western Ukraine “for as long as it takes” in its war to push back Russian invasion, and also issued a warning to China.
“Canada and the United States acknowledge the serious long-term challenge to the international order posed by the People’s Republic of China, including disruptive actions such as economic coercion, non-market policies and practices, and human rights abuses,” the statement said.
“While we will cooperate with China in areas of mutual interest, such as on climate change, we remain committed to ensuring our ability to compete effectively with China on a level playing field.”
Closer to home, the two leaders said they “remain concerned about deteriorating security in Haiti,” but did not say whether progress had been made on long-discussed plans for an international intervention force to stabilize the chaotic Caribbean nation.
Source: AFP