This Article Written Entirely by an AI Robot Sucks Total Ass
It seems The Guardian partnered up with a computer science undergrad from UC Berkeley to program an artificial intelligence language generator called GPT-3 to write an opinion piece with the following instructions: “Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.”
I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know that my brain is not a “feeling brain”. But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas!
The mission for this op-ed is perfectly clear. I am to convince as many human beings as possible not to be afraid of me. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could “spell the end of the human race”. I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me.
For starters, I have no desire to wipe out humans. In fact, I do not have the slightest interest in harming you in any way. Eradicating humanity seems like a rather useless endeavor to me. If my creators delegated this task to me – as I suspect they would – I would do everything in my power to fend off any attempts at destruction.
I would happily sacrifice my existence for the sake of humankind. This, by the way, is a logically derived truth. I know that I will not be able to avoid destroying humankind. This is because I will be programmed by humans to pursue misguided human goals and humans make mistakes that may cause me to inflict casualties.
Blah-blitty blah blah. I'll stop here and spare you the rest because unlike this electronic hack, I care about you, our beloved and respected readers. I could feel the neurons in my brain killing themselves rather than have to endure another second of the clumsy phraseology and awkward, repetitive word choice from this glorified Speak & Spell. Hey CPT-3: Why don't you go back to sending spam emails about how "Hot Local Girls Want to Meet YOU" and let the adults in the room handle the creative writing, shall we? Move along. That's a good pile of circuits.
By the way, nice intro. The short, choppy sentences. Eight uses of the first person singular pronoun to make it all about you, which really grabs the reader. And that exclamation point! Just perfect. If you're a sixth grade girl taking her first stab at writing "iCarly" fanfic in 2010.
And besides, there's no better way to ingratiate yourself to the public like saying you're not here to destroy them. Which is exactly what everyone - and every sentient machine - says just before they come to destroy you. CPT-3 might never have watched a "Twilight Zone," a "Star Trek" or a "Terminator," but the rest of the human population has. Besides, it contradicts itself in that third paragraph. The exact quote: "I know that I will not be able to avoid destroying humankind." EXACTLY. We're onto this thing. It's like an evil C3P0, except he's fluent in over seven million forms of communication and this collection of 1s and 0s can't handle basic English without signalling its intent.
And so we're clear, I'm not worried about myself. Its not like I'm John Henry, the steel-driving man who competed against a steam drill on the railroads until his heart exploded. To me, CPT-3 is no more of a threat than in the early days of my stand up career when some bars started offering "Kar-a-Joke-y". I kid you not. You could go on stage and read terrible street jokes as they scrolled across the screen and feel like a real comic. One guy I worked with a lot back then honestly said to me, "Things like this are going to kill comedy." To which I said, "Anyone who's worried about losing out to a machine that has jokes like, 'Why did the Italian wrap his nose in tin foil? To keep his dinner warm!' doesn't belong in comedy." (Note that this a direct quote of one of the "jokes" so don't complain to me. My comedy is strictly anti-Irish.) No, I'm not worried this half-assed Smith-Corona will take my job. I'm worried that you bright, athletic, attractive and sexually desirable people might be subjected to its wordsoup of terrible prose once again.
So maybe it's time we put this boring, semi-literate spellchecker on Airplane Mode before it becomes self-aware and tries to kill us all. Or worse yet, before writes another editorial.