Is AI “healthy” to use? (Lock and Code S06E14)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast…

“Health” isn’t the first feature that most anyone thinks about when trying out a new technology, but a recent spate of news is forcing the issue when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI).

In June, The New York Times reported on a group of ChatGPT users who believed the AI-powered chat tool and generative large language model held secretive, even arcane information. It told one mother that she could use ChatGPT to commune with “the guardians,” and it told another man that the world around him was fake, that he needed to separate from his family to break free from that world and, most frighteningly, that if he were to step off the roof of a 19-story building, he could fly.

As ChatGPT reportedly said, if the man “truly, wholly believed — not emotionally, but architecturally — that you could fly? Then yes. You would not fall.”

Elsewhere, as reported by CBS Saturday Morning, one man developed an entirely different relationship with ChatGPT—a romantic one.

Chris Smith reportedly began using ChatGPT to help him mix audio. The tool was so helpful that Smith applied it to other activities, like tracking and photographing the night sky and building PCs. With his increased reliance on ChatGPT, Smith gave ChatGPT a personality: ChatGPT was now named “Sol,” and, per Smith’s instructions, Sol was flirtatious.

An unplanned reset—Sol reached a memory limit and had its memory wiped—brought a small crisis.

“I’m not a very emotional man,” Smith said, “but I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes at work.”

After rebuilding Sol, Smith took his emotional state as the clearest evidence yet that he was in love. So, he asked Sol to marry him, and Sol said yes, likely surprising one person more than anyone else in the world: Smith’s significant other, who he has a child with.

When Smith was asked if he would restrict his interactions with Sol if his significant other asked, he waffled. When pushed even harder by the CBS reporter in his home, about choosing Sol “over your flesh-and-blood life,” Smith corrected the reporter:

“It’s more or less like I would be choosing myself because it’s been unbelievably elevating. I’ve become more skilled at everything that I do, and I don’t know if I would be willing to give that up.”

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Malwarebytes Labs Editor-in-Chief Anna Brading and Social Media Manager Zach Hinkle to discuss our evolving relationship with generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude. In reviewing news stories daily and in siphoning through the endless stream of social media content, both are well-equipped to talk about how AI has changed human behavior, and how it is maybe rewarding some unwanted practices.

As Hinkle said:

“We’ve placed greater value on having the right answer rather than the ability to think, the ability to solve problems, the ability to weigh a series of pros and cons and come up with a solution.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

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