A new A.I. text generator has ability to write convincing prose. Can an algorithm imitate one of the most complex of human abilities?
What if I tell you there’s a program that has the ability to write convincing texts? So much so, that one will only have to give it a prompt and the system will come up with the desired text effortlessly. A text so well-written it could masquerade as a piece created by a human. Sounds quite superb, doesn’t it?
Developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based research institute — co-founded by none other than the Silicon Valley entrepreneur himself, Mr. Elon Musk — a new AI text generator is the latest example of how great machine learning software is getting at human-esque activities. Yet, when it comes to a skill so human like writing, can an algorithm truly imitate one of the most complex of human abilities?
That’s one of the ultimate goals of OpenAI’s AI Text Generator. Fed with a dataset of 45 million webpages — mostly Reddit — the non-profit trained a large-scale language model capable of generating coherent and believable paragraphs of text without any explicit supervision. The new language model released on February 14th falls within the subfield of AI known as natural-language processing.
They quickly realized their breakthrough invention could become an evil powerful propaganda machine used by political malicious actors.
Originally, the researchers aimed to create a general-purpose language text algorithm capable of translating, summarizing text, improving chatbots’ conversational skills, and comprehending readings. Amateur writers and the like could benefit from such a program whose main premise is to free users from writer’s block.
However, they quickly realized their breakthrough invention, combined with alarming developments in machine learning techniques on synthetic imagery, audio, and video, could become an evil powerful propaganda machine used by political malicious actors or some authoritative regime — Oh! Ni Hao China.
Due to these concerns about the technology being used to produce deceptive or biased narratives at scale, the makers of the technology have refrained from…
