It certainly seems to, although it is a technology created by humans.* But given, say, Meta’s manipulation of people’s emotions that was revealed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (and which we reported on), the proverbial men behind the curtain do appear to have one, and the question is, given the past behavior of the tech bros, will AI be used for good instead of evil during this next iteration of tech?

Ah, it’s that old “Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It” George Santayana thing again and if there’s one thing we cannot shrink from doing, it’s connecting dots.

First up, “A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court,” TechCrunch reported.

“Claude hallucinated the citation with “an inaccurate title and inaccurate authors,” Anthropic says. Anthropic’s lawyers explain that their “manual citation check” did not catch it, nor several other errors that were caused by Claude’s hallucinations.

“Anthropic apologized for the error and called it “an honest citation mistake and not a fabrication of authority.”

“Earlier this week, a California judge slammed a pair of law firms for submitting “bogus AI-generated research” in his court. In January, an Australian lawyer was caught using ChatGPT in the preparation of court documents and the chatbot produced faulty citations.”

Given that companies do have their agendas, it’s hard to chalk all of this up as just an ‘oops.’

“…these errors aren’t stopping startups from raising enormous rounds to automate legal work. Harvey, which uses generative AI models to assist lawyers, is reportedly in talks to raise over $250 million at a $5 billion valuation, TechCrunch added.

Then there’s this from Futurism: ‘I Loved That AI:’ Judge Moved by AI-Generated Avatar of Man Killed in Road Rage Incident. How the sister of Christopher Pelkey made an avatar of him to testify in court.

Whatever happened to just the facts?  

Dear Investors, we know that your focus is on a portfolio company’s potential of being in the black, but red flags are equally important.

Speaking of possible AI manipulation, “xAI blames Grok’s obsession with white genocide on an ‘unauthorized modification,’” said TechCrunch and do note that South African-born Elon Musk is the founder of xAI. Whether the ‘error’ was on the part of a ‘rogue employee’ once again as reported, one can only speculate, but given Musk’s personal history/country of origin, code manipulation or no, we’re all only human after all.

At least for now.

But this is a heads up as to AI manipulation in terms of possible political agendas and makes you wonder if Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle was merely practice.

Speaking of the many indiscretions/manipulations of Facebook/Meta – sans consequences, at least to date – “Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI,” and welcome to the meta-controlled Matrix?

“Meta’s CEO is promoting a future where artificial intelligence is increasingly intertwined with people’s lives,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Mark Zuckerberg wants you to have AI friends, an AI therapist and AI business agents… Zuckerberg said on a podcast last week that he thinks the average person wants to have more friends and connections with other people than they currently do—and that AI friends are a solution.”

But wait! Wasn’t Facebook about bringing people closer together?

“In Zuckerberg’s vision for a new digital future, artificial-intelligence friends outnumber human companions and chatbot experiences supplant therapists, ad agencies and coders. AI will play a central role in the human experience.

“The very platforms that have led to our social isolation and being chronically online are now posing a solution to the loneliness epidemic,” said Meghana Dhar, a former Instagram executive who thinks AI friends will only make such problems worse. “It almost seems like the arsonist coming back and being the fireman.”

Meta has allowed chatbots on its apps to offer a full range of social interaction, including “romantic role-play,” even with children, the Journal reported.

To make matters worse, Meta Battles an ‘Epidemic of Scams’ as Criminals Flood Instagram and Facebook, said yet another WSJ piece. “Fake puppies and phony offers of mouthwatering bargains are often seeded by overseas crime networks; employees say company is reluctant to impede its advertising juggernaut.”

“Mark Zuckerberg’s recent move to scale back fact checking and policing of hate speech and other problem content has infuriated some and pleased others. But his company’s ongoing ineffectiveness at governing fraud on its platforms has drawn less scrutiny—even though it causes widespread and tangible problems for consumers and businesses.”

And it’ll only get worse, especially given that that other paragon of ethics, “Sam Altman’s, goal for ChatGPT to remember ‘your whole life’ is both exciting and disturbing,” said TechCrunch.

“This model can reason across your whole context and do it efficiently. And every conversation you’ve ever had in your life, every book you’ve ever read, every email you’ve ever read, everything you’ve ever looked at is in there, plus connected to all your data from other sources. And your life just keeps appending to the context,” he described.

“A gross oversimplification is: Older people use ChatGPT as, like, a Google replacement,” (Altman) said. “People in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor.”

“But the scary part? How much should we trust a Big Tech for-profit company to know everything about our lives? These are companies that don’t always behave in model ways. Google, which began life with the motto “don’t be evil” lost a lawsuit in the U.S. that accused it of engaging in anticompetitive, monopolistic behavior.

“Last month, ChatGPT became so agreeable it was downright sycophantic. Users began sharing screenshots of the bot applauding problematic, even dangerous decisions and ideas. Altman quickly responded by promising the team had fixed the tweak that caused the problem.”

And given the man behind the curtain, one can only wonder whether this was a bug or feature they were testing.

“Even the best, most reliable models still just outright make stuff up from time to time,” TechCrunch noted. “So, having an all-knowing AI assistant could help our lives in ways we can only begin to see. But given Big Tech’s long history of iffy behavior, that’s also a situation ripe for misuse.”

And given that these ‘options’ are coming available, do keep in mind that they’re already there – and only now being revealed. What to speak of the fact that, “Coming to a Brain Near You: A Tiny Computer. In the next 12 months, the number of people with a brain-computer interface is set to double,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

What happens when you literally can’t get the AI out of your head? If you believe your privacy is gone now, it seems that you ain’t seen nothing yet!

But we’re simply here to connect the dots and give you a heads up about a technology – and the cabal behind it – that’s taking over more and more each day. And speaking of connecting dots, it’s a group that isn’t exactly known for staying within the lines. Onward and forward.

 

* AI-designed chips are so weird that ‘humans cannot really understand them’ — but they perform better than anything we’ve created. AI models have, within hours, created more efficient wireless chips through deep learning, but it is unclear how their ‘randomly shaped’ designs were produced. –  LiveScience.