Technologies

Computing Pioneer Criticizes ChatGPT AI Tech for Making Things Up

Vint Cerf, who helped create the internet’s core network technology, hopes engineers can fix the flaws of artificial intelligence language processing.

Vint Cerf, a founding father 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.»

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’s concern arrived just as people putting Bing through its paces discovered factual errors that didn’t match source documents and bizarre chat behavior during extended conversations. Microsoft pledged to improve performance.

In 2004, Cerf shared the 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.

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

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 Might Come in 5G and 4G Cellular Models

If the rumor proves true, the 5G Galaxy Watch Ultra would rival the 5G-enabled $799 Apple Watch Ultra 3 that debuted last fall.

Samsung’s next high-end Galaxy Watch could support faster 5G speeds, but if this leak is true, it will depend on where you live. The rumored Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 might come in 5G and 4G cellular models, with availability for each smartwatch depending on the country.

According to the Dutch website Galaxy Club (and spotted by SamMobile), Samsung’s servers may have revealed a series of model numbers that point to 5G, 4G and Wi-Fi-enabled editions of the next Galaxy Watch Ultra, which would succeed the original model that debuted in 2024.

A representative for Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Galaxy Club website speculates that the 5G edition would be sold in the US and Korean markets, while the 4G edition would sell in the rest of the world. In the US, a 5G version of the Galaxy Watch Ultra would rival the 5G-enabled $799 Apple Watch Ultra 3, which debuted last fall. The 4G edition would have broader compatibility worldwide, since the earlier network is far more established.

It will likely be a few months until we hear anything official about the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. Samsung typically unveils its new watches in the summer alongside its Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip foldable phones. Last year, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Watch 8 and the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, but otherwise left the prior 2024 Ultra in the lineup for those looking for a larger 47mm smartwatch.

Technologies

2 Cases Show Supreme Court Isn’t Holding ISPs Responsible for Piracy

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 8, #1032

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 8, No. 1032.

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

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. The purple category is a fun one, once you see the connection. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: In the group.

Green group hint: Appearance details.

Blue group hint: Often found in gyms.

Purple group hint: They help you see.