This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. And as a suggested topic lets talk about the artificial intelligence generated counterfeit humans. For this article lets call them AI Agents.
Quite simply the AI Agent can be trained to look, sound, and act like a human. Thus, this leads to scammers and criminals to use them to assist them in their criminal activities. But when these simple AI Agents are given an stolen identity and are acting in the real word impersonating a real human it becomes one of the most extreme examples of a counterfeit human.
To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value than the real thing.
Wikipedia: Counterfeit
Just how do we safeguard against or discourage impersonation by counterfeit humans? Three suggestions follow.
1) One way to sort this out is to make the humans authenticate themselves using Orbs. The Orb, pictured to the right, is a sphere with sensors that scan the users eye pattern. And this data becomes the key to a obtaining World ID. (Ironically, this product is brought to you the same person that released GPT-4 on to the world, Sam Altman.)
2) Another more immediate thing we can do is request our elected representatives to enact enhancement charges on any existing crimes on the books if assisted by an artificial intelligence.
3) And the third long term safeguard is to support AI alignment research recommendations for regulating, controlling, and building the AI systems. In other words build into the AI systems an innate alignment with human values from scratch.
Jump the fold for further discussion and please answer the poll.
What is your relationship with AI?
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Sam Altman’s Open AI company released Chat GPT-3 to the world on November 30, 2022. And everything changed. This initial release portended a disruptive change in how every business that wants to stay competitive and profitable manages it affairs and its employees.
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) is a large language model-based chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022, notable for enabling users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language used. Successive prompts and replies, known as prompt engineering, are taken into account at each stage of the conversation as a context.
From Wikipedia: ChatGPT
In January of 2023 I finally got around to getting a free account to play around with Chat GPT-3 and it started my relationship with an AI Agent. My first article on the topic from February, 2023 can be found here: Emergent abilities in artificial intelligence such as Chat GPT-3, DALL-E2, You.com, etc. (with poll)
At this time GPT-3 had no direct access to the internet and it had a limited capacity to carry out complex multi-step actions. And with out human help it was unable to action plans in the real world. But, newer versions were on the way. A 3.5 version and a 4.0 version. With each revision the system “smarter” and displayed new emergent abilities that often surprised the creators.
By by May, 30, 2023 a outcry by AI critics emerged publicly with a 22 word statement warning about the existential threat that AI poses to humanity.
The 22-word statement, trimmed short to make it as broadly acceptable as possible, reads as follows: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
From The Verge: Top AI researchers and CEOs warn against ‘risk of extinction’ in 22-word statement
This shorter statement, above, is a follow up to the March 22, open letter signed by 33,002 humans calling for a pause in AI experiments pending safety assessments of systems more powerful that GPT-4.
Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.
From the Future of Life Institute: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter
Back in March 20, 2023 I did a Street Prophets diary, Should ChatGPT be allowed to hire humans? (with poll), that highlighted a problem discovered with GPT-4 during testing. And it gives an example of GPT-4 deliberately lying to accomplish a goal. The AI Agent pretended to be a human in order to hire a human. In other words the AI Agent became a counterfeit human. Is this a crime?
ChatGPT-4 was tested and the results of the testing can be viewed here in this PDF called a "System Card." This testing report was prepared by the Alignment Research Center (ARC). Below is a screen grab from the PDF that prompts today's topic and question.
The upshot is ChatGPT-4 hired a human to “see” for them and lied about its true identity.
From Daily Kos: Should ChatGPT be allowed to hire humans? (with poll)
The Orb is brought to you by Tools For Humanity that was co-founded by Sam Altman. And the “hype” that surrounds the ORB is interesting with the dangle of redistribution of wealth. But, why should I as a human register with ORB to potentially secure my online identity. I expect the AI Agent companies to keep their counterfeit humans from stealing my identity.
Altman co-founded Tools For Humanity in 2019, a company building a global iris-based biometric system using cryptocurrency, called Worldcoin. Worldcoin's aim is to provide a reliable way to authenticate humans online, to counter bots and fake virtual identities facilitated by artificial intelligence. Using a distribution mechanism for its cryptocurrency similar to UBI, Worldcoin attempts to incentivize users to join its network by getting their iris scanned using Worldcoin's orb-shaped iris scanner.
Wikipedia: Sam Altman Worldcoin
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In closing I would like to bring the discussion back to the question, “What should we be doing about this?” I’m not ready yet to rush out and find an Orb or apply to become a Orb Operator. But what I can do is ask my representatives to enact new laws to protect individuals from crimes committed by AI Agents. In regards to #3 AI Alignment I plan to devote a whole article to that topic in the future.
On Wednesday I’m attending an Open House with my congressman, John Garamendi. Also in attendance will be my State Senator, Bill Dodd. I’m planning to ask them what they are going to do about addressing the counterfeit human issue.
I will report on their reply next week.
Regards,
JON