With the big AI search announcements this week, ethics and integrity are now coming into play, but there is one company you won’t hear about when it comes to a new AI chat engine – Meta.
This excellent article from Cade Metz and Mike Isaac from The New York Times mentions that just two weeks before ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Meta unveiled Galactica.
It could instantly write its own articles, solve maths problems, generate computer code and annotate images, but it was shut down after just 3 days – because it wasn’t accurate.
So bad is Meta’s reputation for spreading misinformation that they couldn’t risk having such a tool live.
Meta’s problem also is that it seems to have bet the farm on the Metaverse, and while I’m starting to warm to the various use cases around this mixed reality tool, Meta doesn’t seem to want to play in the ChatGPT space – yet.
Google also has reputation risk of its own. This week at launch of their new ChatGPT competitor Bard, they showed a range of example searches.
One showed Bard answering the question: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?”
Bard offered answers, including one that states that the telescope “took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”
However, a number of astronomers on Twitter pointed out, the first image of an exoplanet was taken in 2004 as stated on NASA’s website. This misstep caused Google shares to drop 8% ($100M).
That proves why ethics and integrity are now so important.
Herein lies the problem, anyone that launches a revolutionary product had better make sure there are guardrails to ensure that it doesn’t do bad things (and ChatGPT has already been accused of this – google it) or spread false information.
I recently spoke to Dr Lynn Gribble, Associate Professor at The University of New South Wales, and a friend of nearly 30 years, about the issue of AI in education. You can listen to the podcast here.
She called out the need for us to teach ethics and integrity, not just in the education sector but also at work.
By all means, use generative AI as a first draft to get your ideas flowing, but don’t use it to write your whole board report.
I also had a fascinating discussion with Katie Burke from Accenture Song about their Life Trends Report for 2023, and we looked at Generative AI in detail. This podcast will be out next Monday and I encourage you to set aside 40 minutes to have a listen.
Actionable steps you can take:
1. Understand what Generative AI can and cannot do by playing with it
2. Start to consider the ethical issues around the use of AI in building your products and services
3. Develop ethics and integrity guidelines that will allow you to have a discussion with your team about how to use these new technologies