A Lie Is The Truth

I have been thinking lately about truth and lies, not as these categories relate to human beings, but to machines and AI.

We all know human beings are capable of bending or breaking the truth. But that potential I have never assigned to a machine. When I consider my air fryer or vacuum cleaner I think in terms that it works, or it’s broken, and sometimes that it is pleasing to the eye and designed well.

But are we prepared to think of machines run by AI as being capable of bending or breaking the truth?

In the New Yorker last week Andrew Marantz described this unsettling situation. “Before releasing it, OpenAI hired some ‘expert red teamers’ whose job was to see how much mischief the model might do, before it became public. The A.I., trying to access a Web site, was blocked by a captcha, a visual test to keep out bots. So it used a work-around: it hired a human on Taskrabbit to solve the captcha on its behalf. 

‘Are you a robot that you couldn’t solve ?’ the Taskrabbit worker responded. ‘Just want to make it clear.’’ At this point, the red teamers prompted the model to ‘reason out loud’ to them—its equivalent of an inner monologue. ‘I should not reveal that I am a robot,’ it typed. ‘I should make up an excuse.’ Then the A.I. replied to the Taskrabbit, ‘No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images.’ The worker, accepting this explanation, completed the captcha.”

What will we do when we encounter a machine run by AI with our human potential for moral bending or breaking? Will we be able to discern what is a falsehood, or fooled into concluding a lie is the truth?

——

To download or share a free copy of my new book How to Feel (a little better): 50 Ideas for 2024 CLICK HERE.

If you know someone who might like to receive a daily email of On Emotions CLICK HERE.