Technologies

Computing Guru Criticizes ChatGPT AI Tech for Making Things Up

Vint Cerf, who helped create the internet’s core network technology, hopes engineers can improve artificial intelligence’s shortcoming.

Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, has some harsh words for the suddenly hot technology behind the ChatGPT AI chatbot: «Snake oil.»

Google’s internet evangelist wasn’t completely down on the artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT and Google’s own competing Bard, called a large language model. But, speaking Monday at Celesta Capital’s TechSurge Summit, he did warn about ethical issues of a technology that can generate plausible sounding but incorrect information even when trained on a foundation of factual material.

If an executive tried to get him to apply ChatGPT to some business problem, his response would be to call it snake oil, referring to bogus medicines that quacks sold in the 1800s, he said. Another ChatGPT metaphor involved kitchen appliances.

«It’s like a salad shooter — you know how the lettuce goes all over everywhere,» Cerf said. «The facts are all over everywhere, and it mixes them together because it doesn’t know any better.»

Cerf shared the 2004 Turing Award, the top prize in computing, for helping to develop the internet foundation called TCP/IP, which shuttles data from one computer to another by breaking it into small, individually addressed packets that can take different routes from source to destination. He’s not an AI researcher, but he’s a computing engineer who’d like to see his colleagues improve AI’s shortcomings.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and competitors like Google’s Bard hold the potential to significantly transform our online lives by answering questions, drafting emails, summarizing presentations and performing many other tasks. Microsoft has begun building OpenAI’s language technology into its Bing search engine in a significant challenge to Google, but it uses its own index of the web to try to «ground» OpenAI’s flights of fancy with authoritative, trustworthy documents.

Cerf said he was surprised to learn that ChatGPT could fabricate bogus information from a factual foundation. «I asked it, ‘Write me a biography of Vint Cerf.’ It got a bunch of things wrong,» Cerf said. That’s when he learned the technology’s inner workings — that it uses statistical patterns spotted from huge amounts of training data to construct its response.

«It knows how to string a sentence together that’s grammatically likely to be correct,» but it has no true knowledge of what it’s saying, Cerf said. «We are a long way away from the self-awareness we want.»

OpenAI, which earlier in February launched a $20 per month plan to use ChatGPT, has been clear about about the technology’s shortcomings but aims to improve it through «continuous iteration.»

«ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Fixing this issue is challenging,» the AI research lab said when it launched ChatGPT in November.

Cerf hopes for progress, too. «Engineers like me should be responsible for trying to find a way to tame some of these technologies so they are less likely to cause trouble,» he said.

Cerf’s comments stood in contrast to those of another Turing award winner at the conference, chip design pioneer and former Stanford President John Hennessy, who offered a more optimistic assessment of AI.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personalfinance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. Formore, see this post.

Technologies

Facebook Brings Back Local Job Listings: How to Apply

One of Facebook’s most practical features from 2022 is being revived by Meta.

On the hunt for work? A Local Jobs search is being rolled out by Meta to make it easier for people in the US to discover and apply for nearby work directly on Facebook. The feature is inside Facebook Marketplace, Groups and Pages, Meta said last week, letting employers post openings and job seekers filter roles by distance, category or employment type.

You can apply or message employers directly through Facebook Messenger, while employers can publish job listings with just a few taps — similar to how you would post items for sale on Marketplace.

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Facebook offered a Jobs feature before discontinuing it in 2022, pushing business hiring toward its other platforms. Its return suggests Meta is attempting to expand Facebook’s usefulness beyond social networking and to position it once again as a hub for community-driven opportunities.

«We’ve always been about connecting with people, whether through shared interests or key life events,» the press release states. «Now, if you’re looking for entry-level, trade and service industry employment in your community, Facebook can help you connect with local people and small businesses who are hiring.»

How to get started with Local Jobs on Facebook

According to Meta, Local Jobs will appear as a dedicated section in Facebook Marketplace starting this week. If you’re 18 or older, you can:

Tap the Marketplace tab on the Facebook app or website.
Select Jobs to browse available positions nearby.
Use filters for job type, category and distance.
Tap Apply or message the employer directly via Messenger.

Businesses and page admins can post jobs by creating a new listing in Marketplace or from their Facebook Page. Listings can include job details, pay range, and scheduling information and will appear in local searches automatically.

The Local Jobs feature is rolling out across the US now, with Meta saying it plans to expand it in the months ahead.

Technologies

Tesla Has a New Range of Affordable Electric Cars: How Much They Cost

The new, stripped-back versions of the Model Y and Model 3 have a more affordable starting price.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Oct. 22 #598

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Oct. 22, No. 598.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one — I definitely have at least two of these in my house. Some of the answers are a bit tough to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Catch all.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: A mess of items.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

BATE, LICE, SLUM, CAPE, HOLE, CARE, BARE, THEN, SLAM, SAMBA, BACK

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TAPE, COIN, PENCIL, BATTERY, SHOELACE, THUMBTACK

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is JUNKDRAWER. To find it, look for the J that’s five letters down on the far-left row, and wind down, over and then up.

Quick tips for Strands

#1: To get more clue words, see if you can tweak the words you’ve already found, by adding an «S» or other variants. And if you find a word like WILL, see if other letters are close enough to help you make SILL, or BILL.

#2: Once you get one theme word, look at the puzzle to see if you can spot other related words.

#3: If you’ve been given the letters for a theme word, but can’t figure it out, guess three more clue words, and the puzzle will light up each letter in order, revealing the word.