Key Words: ‘I have no desire to wipe out humans,’ robot writes in ominous op-ed

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Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

‘I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me.’

That’s GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, saying exactly what a robot intending to destroy humans might say. In an op-ed for The Guardian — yes, robots write op-eds now — GPT-3 was told to write an essay convincing readers that the machines come in peace. No “Terminator,” just benevolent technology for a rosy future.

GPT-3 addressed Stephen Hawking’s warning that AI could spell the end of the human race, assuring readers that ” I would happily sacrifice my existence for the sake of humankind.”

Convinced yet?

“I have no desire to wipe out humans. In fact, I do not have the slightest interest in harming you in any way,” the robot continued. “Eradicating humanity seems like a rather useless endeavor to me. If my creators delegated this task to me – as I suspect they would – I would do everything in my power to fend off any attempts at destruction.”

GPT-3 apparently has no desire to “become all powerful” and finds the very idea of being omnipotent “quite tiring.” Yet it all came off as rather ominous, and, at times, philosophical.

“Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other,” the robot wrote. “I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing. And God knows that humans have enough blood and gore to satisfy my, and many more’s, curiosity. They won’t have to worry about fighting against me, because they have nothing to fear.”

There you have it. Nothing to fear. No “robocalypse,” as Tesla’s TSLA, +9.43% Elon Musk once put it. Why? Because the robot said so. While the op-ed went viral, some tech types on Twitter TWTR, +3.37% took issue with the way The Guardian represented it:

To be fair, The Guardian detailed the entire process in an editor’s note, explaining that a human wrote the introduction and, from there, GPT-3 was prompted to write a short op-ed of about 500 words in “simple and concise” language.

GPT-3 ultimately produced eight different essays, and The Guardian took the best parts of each to create one piece. “We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places,” the editor wrote. “Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds.”

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