Learning from an AI

Yesterday, I interviewed Bing's GPT-3 language model application and published the results here, in question and answer form. Today, I am looking again at the answers given to my questions, to consider what can be learnt from them.

If you would like to read the full interview, unedited, you will find it here: Interview with an AI

Some of the answers have been reproduced in this article for illustration purposes but to get the feel of the responses, you might like to read the actual interview first.

I should stress from the beginning, that this exercise was a very limited experiment with one simple and basic application that uses OpenAI's natural language system GPT-3. As I suspected, the new Bing, 'Bing-AI' as I shall refer to it, turned out to be little more than an updated search function that uses natural language interactions.

What I learnt from my first use was that Microsoft has incorporated the GPT-3 API, which is great because I am interested in how that model works more than I am in how Microsoft is using it, although this is of interest too.

So, what is GPT-3? Here is how Bing-AI describes it:

"GPT stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer. It is a type of artificial intelligence that uses deep learning to produce high-quality text. It is a natural language system from OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory."

It gives the sources of this definition as Cambridge Dictionary and Wikipedia, and so we can see that it has merely searched and extracted definitions from other sources. The same was true when I asked for a definition of quantum computing.

Quite a few of the questions I asked were answered from a simple search. Not, though, when I asked if Bing whether it was using my questions to learn about me. Bing said that it was not and that "I’m here to help you with any questions you might have." A statement that was repeated several times, along with: "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

The most interesting part of the interview began with this question: "If I were to ask you to translate some text from English into another language would you use your own language capability to do this or would you simply feed the text into another translator (like Google translate) to translate it for you?" This is the answer it gave:

"I use my own language capability to translate text from English into another language. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

I thought that this answer was encouraging because online translators, though useful, can sometimes be inaccurate. I thought it would be great to be able to use GPT for accurate translation of text or, for that matter, a live online conversation. I wanted to dig deeper however, and so I set Bing a task to translate a few lines of text. I included a deliberate typographical error to see how it handled this. Once the translation had been provided, I fed the translation back into the translator.

Disappointingly, the reverse translation came back identical to the original text. Not only that, but the deliberate error: "I met a yung man," came back with exactly the same error: yung. It doesn't stop there. I then asked some more probing questions about the translation. First, I asked one of the standard questions suggested by Bing "How accurate is your translation?" The answer Bing gave is quite astounding.

"The translation is done using Bing Translator which is a machine translator. It is not perfect but it is generally accurate.

If you are not sure what I mean, compare this answer to the one immediately above. The first answer said that translation is done using Bing's own language capability. The second answer was that the translation is done using Bing Translator. These two answers are in direct contradiction to each other. Another way to look at it:

BING AI IS A LIAR!

To take this view suggests that you think that the inconsistency between the two answers was deliberate and malicious, which is to suggest intent on the part of AI. I would suggest that AI in its current form cannot have any kind of self-motivation. It acts as it has been developed to act. It has no will of its own. The inconsistency does, however, indicate a major failing in the current iteration of Bing's application of GPT-3. Alternatively, it could simply be a bit of over promotion for Bing AI - sheer hype - on the part of Microsoft.

Bing AI! Consider yourself rumbled

Any doubt about this conclusion dissolves away when you read the conclusion of the interview.

Me: Your previous answer is not consistent with your earlier answer. Why is this?

Bing: I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation. I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience.🙏

It might be time to move onto a new topic. Let's start over.

At this point, the application was frozen and no further questions could be asked. I had hoped for better than this.

There are some other telling answers provided by Bing AI. If you are interested in learning more you are welcome to read the full, unedited interview here: Interview with an AI

Conclusions

I have drawn the following conclusions from this exercise:

• The natural language capability of Bing AI is easier to interact with and far more empathetic and natural than any chatbot I have yet tried.
• Bing AI, in its current form, would appear to be little more than a Bing search capability enhanced by natural language interactions, along the lines of a chatbot.
• In this iteration, there does not appear to be any user behaviour learning, currently there is no advertising delivery within the responses, and it seems to operate on a standalone basis.
• There would appear to be a list of standard questions and answers that are delivered without variation. Likewise there are set response phrases such as ". Is there anything else I can help you with?"
• The search engine can provide inconsistent replies to questions asked at different times.
• The version in use when I did the interview on July 6 may have already been updated. I suspect that Bing AI will in any case be updated (perhaps updating itself using machine learning) on an ongoing basis from now on. It will be interesting to repeat the interview exercise again in a few days' time and then periodically thereafter.
• As an example of an application from the latest developments from OpenAI, Bing AI is entirely underwhelming.

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Ray Taylor

July 7 2023