B
e
n
D
i
c
k
s
o
n
A
recent article in The Guardian stirred up
a lot of excitement—and a little fear—on
social media. The reason: The initial
draft was reportedly written by GPT-3, OpenAI’s
new text generator.6LQFHLWVEHWDUHOHDVH*37DQDUWL¿FLDO
intelligence system that takes a cue and generates
text, has captivated the tech community and the
media. Developers and computer scientists have
been using it to write articles, website markup,
and even software code. Some entrepreneurs are
contemplating creating new products on GPT-3.:KLOHÀDZHGLQIXQGDPHQWDOZD\V*37VWLOO
shows how far advances in natural language
processing have come. This is by far the largest
and most coherent text-generation algorithm
ever created.But it also highlights some of the problems the AI
research community faces, including its growing
dependence on the wealth of large tech
companies. This is a problem that could endanger
WKHVFLHQWL¿FPLVVLRQIRUZKLFK2SHQ$,DQGRWKHU
AI research labs were founded.This Technology Could
Transform Humanity, If
Silicon Valley Doesn’t Ruin It
Ben Dickson is a
software engineer
who writes about
disruptive tech
trends, including
artificial intelligence,
VR and AR, the IoT,
and blockchain. Ben
also runs the blog
Tech Talks.COMMENTARY