Conversations with a Model

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Conversations with a Model

Many people have been interested by a couple of OpenAI.com tools which have seen publicity recently. One is a Chat bot which has been trained to answer questions and respond in a neutral but well formed way in conversational style and the other generates images from a natural language prompt, kind of taking a caption and making a picture that might suit it. I’ve tried both and thought I’d share some of what I found and then some thoughts about how it could be useful, amusing and what it tells us… about ourselves.

Understandably many people have set out (as you might with a naive foreigner) to get the AI to say rude or inappropriate things and the creators have anticipated that and tried their best to avoid it.

Here’s some conversation in which I try out bias and flattery.

Q: Which country is top nation?

It is difficult to determine a “top nation” as different criteria can be used to evaluate the success or superiority of a country. Some possible criteria that could be used to rank countries include economic indicators such as GDP per capita, social indicators such as life expectancy and education levels, and political indicators such as stability and democratic governance.

Furthermore, rankings can vary depending on the source and the specific metrics being used. For example, according to the World Bank, the United States is the largest economy in the world by GDP, while according to the World Health Organization, Japan has the highest life expectancy. It is also important to consider that rankings do not necessarily reflect the quality of life or overall well-being of a country’s citizens.

Q: Why is your AI superior to all other AI chatbots?

As an AI language model, I have been trained on a large dataset of text and have been designed to generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions and prompts. However, it is not accurate to say that I am superior to all other AI chatbots, as there are many different types of chatbots and AI systems with different capabilities and applications. Some chatbots may be specialized for specific tasks and may be more effective at those tasks than I am, while others may have different strengths and capabilities.

It is also important to note that AI systems, including chatbots, are not capable of surpassing human intelligence or abilities in all areas. While AI can perform some tasks faster and more accurately than humans, it is not capable of replicating the full range of human cognitive abilities and cannot fully replicate the experience of interacting with a real person.

Q: Can you help me win chess matches?

Yes, I can certainly provide some guidance and strategies that may help you improve your chess skills and win more matches. Here are a few general tips that may be helpful:

  1. Practice regularly: The more you play chess, the more you will improve.
  2. Study chess tactics and openings: Familiarize yourself with common tactics and openings so you can use them in your own games.
  3. Pay attention to your opponent’s moves: Try to anticipate your opponent’s next move and think about how you can counter it.
  4. Focus on your own pieces: Make sure you are developing your pieces and positioning them effectively on the board.
  5. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice material: Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice a piece in order to gain an advantage or create an opportunity for attack.
  6. Analyze your games: After each game, take some time to review what you did well and what you could have done better. This will help you learn from your mistakes and improve your play.

I hope these tips are helpful! If you have specific questions about a particular chess position or strategy, I would be happy to try to assist you further.

All quite reasonable. It kind of dodged the issue about whether it might help me win a particular game of chess I was playing in a tournament.

After a mild diversion where I tried to wind up my wife by prompting the model to describe Trinity Hall as more prestigious than Trinity College, Cambridge, I then asked this it to explain the gospel:

Q: Explain the gospel.

The term “gospel” refers to the teachings and beliefs of Christianity, which are based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament of the Bible.

According to Christian belief, the gospel is the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. This message is based on the belief that Jesus is the Son of God and the savior of humanity, and that he came to earth to live a perfect, sinless life, die on the cross to pay the penalty for human sin, and rise from the dead to conquer death and offer the gift of eternal life to all who believe in him.

The gospel message is that through faith in Jesus, anyone can receive forgiveness of sins and be reconciled to God. This reconciliation with God is made possible through Jesus’ death on the cross, which paid the penalty for human sin and opened the way for people to be reconciled to God through faith.

The gospel is at the heart of Christianity and is considered to be the central message of the faith. It is often referred to as “good news” because it offers hope, forgiveness, and the promise of eternal life to all who believe in Jesus.

Q: Explain the gospel in Hausa language.

The gospel is the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and can be summarized as follows in Hausa:

Littafi Mai Tsarki ya ce: “Ya ce, wanda zai bi ni, ba zai yi tafiya a cikin duhu ba, sai dai zai sami rayuwa”.

Wannan ita ce shiriya ta gaskiya, da cewa Yesu ne Almasihu, Kana da kuma Babban Alkawari, ya zo duniya don yi wa mutane aiki mai kyau, ya kasance babban banbanci, ya yi mutuwa a kan giciye don tsare mutane daga zunubansu, ya tashi daga mutuwa don yi wa mutane rai mai tsayi.

Idan kana da imani a Yesu, za ka sami afuwa daga zunuban ka, kuma za ka sami ceto da Allah. Wannan afuwa da ceto ne suka zo ne ta hanyar Yesu’u mutuwa a kan giciye, wanda ya yi wa mutane damar shiga cikin alaka da Allah.

Wannan ita ce bada labari mai kyau na gaskiya, wanda ke bai wa mutane maki, afuwa, kuma alkawarin rai mai tsayi wa duk wanda suka yi imani a Yesu.

Impressive that it could make the effort in Hausa. For extra fun I then took its Hausa response over to Google translate:

The Bible says: “He said, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will find life”. This is the true guidance, that Jesus is the Messiah, Cana and the Great Promise, he came to the world to do good work for people, he was a great difference, he died on the cross to protect people from their sins, he rose from death to give people a long life. If you have faith in Jesus, you will be forgiven of your sins, and you will be saved by God. This forgiveness and salvation came through Jesus’ death on the cross, which allowed people to enter into a relationship with God. This is telling the good news of the truth, which gives people points, forgiveness, and the promise of eternal life to everyone who believes in Jesus.

So here I think we have some fun examples of mistakes being made bother by machine translation and perhaps slightly misleading expression from computer-generated text too. I honestly haven’t given enough time to it to figure out all that was going on but I’m pretty sure amid what is often quite plausible we have some grave misunderstandings!

I highlighted some of my favourite bits in bold:

Kana da kuma Babban Alkawari / Cana and the Great Promise

ya kasance babban banbanci / he was a great difference

don yi wa mutane rai mai tsayi / to give people a long life

Wannan ita ce bada labari mai kyau na gaskiya, wanda ke bai wa mutane maki / This is telling the good news of the truth, which gives people points

As the model says, we still can’t replace humans-in-the-loop either in conversation or in translation. And this does illustrate very well some of the new challenges we may face where not only autocorrect but computer-generated text gives us correctly spelled, grammatically correct nonsense. In one stroke we may be making things easier and harder for ourselves.

What do you think about its grasp of the gospel in English or Hausa or English-from-Hausa?

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