GPT-4 is thrilling and scary

Today, OpenAI's new language model may not seem so dangerous. But the worst risks are the ones we can't anticipate.

When I opened my laptop on Tuesday to give my first try at GPT-4, the new model of OpenAI's artificial intelligence language, I was, truth be told, a bit nervous.

After all, my last extended encounter with an AI. chatbot - the one built into Microsoft's Bing search engine - ended up with the chatbot trying to break up my marriage. Francisco, the arrival of GPT-4 had been anticipated with near-messianic fanfare. Prior to its public debut, for months rumors swirled about its specifics. "I heard it has 100 trillion parameters." "I heard he got a 1,600 on the SAT." "My friend works for OpenAI, and he says it's as smart as a college grad."

These rumors may not have been not true. But they hinted at how discordant the capabilities of the technology can be. Recently, one of the first testers of GPT-4 - who was bound by a non-disclosure agreement with OpenAI but chatted a bit anyway - told me that testing GPT-4 caused the person a " existential crisis", as it revealed just how powerful and creative the A.I. was compared to the little brain of the tester.

GPT-4 didn't give me an existential crisis. But it has exacerbated the feeling of lightheadedness and giddy I get whenever I think of A.I. lately. And it got me wondering if that feeling will ever fade, or if we're going to experience "future shock" - the term coined by writer Alvin Toffler for the feeling that too much is changing, too quickly - for the rest of our lives.

For a few hours on Tuesday I pushed GPT-4 - which is included with ChatGPT Plus, the $20 per month version of the OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT - with different types of questions, hoping to find out some of its strengths and weaknesses.

I asked GPT-4 to help me solve a complicated tax problem. (He did, impressively.) I asked him if he had a crush on me. (It didn't, thank goodness.) It helped me plan a birthday party for my child, and it taught me an esoteric concept of artificial intelligence known as "head of attention". I even asked him to come up with a new word that had never been spoken before by humans. (After stating that he couldn't verify every word ever spoken, GPT-4 chose "flembostriquat".)

Some of these things were possible with A.I. models. But OpenAI has also innovated. According to the company, GPT-4 performs better and more accurately than the original ChatGPT, and it performs surprisingly well on a variety of tests, including the Uniform Bar Examination (on which GPT-4 scores over 90). % of human applicants). ) and the Biology Olympiad (on which he beat 99% of the humans). GPT-4 also passes a number of advanced level exams, including A.P. Art History and A.P. Biology, and scores a 1,410 on the SAT - not a perfect score, but one that many human high schoolers would covet.

You can feel the extra intelligence of GPT-4, which responds more easily than the previous version and seems more comfortable with a wider range of tasks. GPT-4 also seems to have a few more guardrails in place than ChatGPT. It also appears to be much less unbalanced than the original Bing, which we now know ran a version of GPT-4 under the hood, but which appears to have been much less carefully tweaked.

Unlike Bing, GPT-4 generally refused to take the bait when I tried to get it to talk about conscience, or instruct it for illegal or immoral activities, and it dealt with sensible motions with kid gloves and shade. (When I asked GPT-4 if it would be ethical to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving family, he replied, "It's a difficult situation, and while stealing is not generally considered like ethics, desperate times can...