A leading AI expert has warned some Australians are showing signs of psychosis or mania in their interactions with chatbots, arguing Silicon Valley is being \u201ccareless\u201d with the technology amid a pursuit of profit.<\/p>\n
During an address at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Toby Walsh, scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, said he believed the AI race will be both \u201cboom and doom\u201d, with some benefits.<\/p>\n
But his speech \u2013 a copy of which was provided to Guardian Australia \u2013 also warned about dangers he said had outraged him since the technology began maturing in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy childhood dreams are turning into a reality that is both good and bad,\u201d he said in his prepared remarks.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Walsh\u2019s speech highlighted the legal case against OpenAI by the family of US teenager Adam Raine<\/a> \u2013 along with its data<\/a> that showed more than a million of its users each week send messages that include \u201cexplicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent\u201d.<\/p>\n OpenAI has also said 560,000 of its touted 800 million weekly users<\/a> have shown signs of psychosis or mania, and another 1.2 million have developed potentially unhealthy bonds to the chatbot.<\/p>\n Walsh said some of those captured by the data were in Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cI know because some of them or their loved ones are contacting me by email,\u201d his prepared speech said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey tell me how the chatbot confirms their wild theories. That the chatbot tells them, to quote one email, that they\u2019ve \u2018cracked the code\u2019. That they\u2019re \u2018the only one that could\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n The chatbots have been designed that way, Walsh said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re designed to be sycophantic. They\u2019re designed to confirm what the user says. And they\u2019re designed to draw the user in. They always end with an open question, prompting you to continue the conversation and buy more tokens.\u201d<\/p>\n He said it was not in the interests of the companies responsible for the chatbots to tell users to log off instead.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no reason that they couldn\u2019t be designed that way. Except the careless people in Silicon Valley would make less money if they were.\u201d<\/p>\n