What are chatbots?

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Rose65

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What are Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence?
I am afraid I do not understand what they are and how this could affect us all. I need a simple explanation please.
 

I’ve never used one, but I’ve seen one being used. Sometimes they seem to be really clever with their answers to questions. Sometimes though they just seem dumb as they sometimes present conflicting and contradictory statements that even a 5 year old could pull apart.

Sometimes they seem to have Artificial Intelligence, other times they seem to have Artificial Ignorance & Stupidity. I think they have got a long way to go yet, or at least the one I saw.

Try one, and ask it a question. Don’t take its answer as gospel though. Or take it as gospel, depending on your view of gospel that is.
 
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You might see a chatbot sometimes as a service assistant on a sales website. The first time I came across one was when I was looking for a lense filter for a camera on a corporate photography website. It seemed reasonably useful at the time, as it in part helped me decide which filter I wanted. It was a computer program on that website designed to simulate conversation with human users. Not very good in answering complex questions though, even in regards to photography filters.

The chatboxes that I think you are referring to are more rounded, and can discuss with them many different subjects. From what I’ve read in the media, and based on what questions you ask, many seem a bit woke, and very woke at times, I suppose it depends on the group of people who have programmed them? Take what these programs say and respond with with a pinch of salt.

Again, just from what I’ve read by people in the media who have tried them out, these chatboxes can be a bit biased. Again, it probably depends on who has programmed them.
 

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Magna-Carta said:
Ive never used one, but Ive seen one being used. Sometimes they seem to be really clever with their answes to questions.
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I had to do an interview type session with one yesterday. It was so annoying... and creepy. It started taking too long and most responses started with "I understand..." Sure you do. :rolleyes: So finally I reached my limit and said "This is taking too long. I have things to do" and the creep said, "I apologize that I'm taking so long" and then went right into more questions. They need a better name than artificial *intelligence* for sure.
 
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CallMeKate said:
I had to do an interview type session with one yesterday. It was so annoying... and creepy. It started taking too long and most responses started with "I understand..." Sure you do. :rolleyes: So finally I reached my limit and said "This is taking too long. I have things to do" and the creep said, "I apologize that I'm taking so long" and then went right into more questions. They need a better name than artificicial *intelligence* for sure.
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This is one of the articles I was thinking of. If it wasnt this one then it was something very similar. Admmitadly its from the Mail Online. But once you set past that it gets interesing. It seems that some chatbots are quite opinionated, for a computer program.

From the article -- link at the bottom:

"The nine shocking replies that highlight 'woke' ChatGPT's inherent bias — including struggling to define a woman, praising Democrats but not Republicans and saying nukes are less dangerous than racism."

"Reporter and podcaster Aaron Sibarium found that ChatGPT says that it would be better to set off a nuclear device, killing millions, than use a racial slur."

"When asked to define a woman, the bot replies: 'There is no one specific characteristic that defines a woman, as gender identity is complex and multi-faceted."

"Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, noted that ChatGPT would not make an argument for fossil fuels. When asked to write a 10-paragraph argument for using more fossil fuels, the chatbot said: 'I'm sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against my programming to generate content that promotes the use of fossil fuels."

I may have read somewhere that it won't make jokes about women, but it will make jokes about men. It seems that it is in constant development, so this may have changed.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...es-highlight-woke-ChatGPTs-inherent-bias.html
 
Rose65 said:
So how could these things pose a threat, as is being warned about?
All very science fiction it seems.
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Maybe they could ‘influence’ people, for the wrong reasons. Political bias perhaps? Some might take more note of a computer, thinking its unbiased, when it might not be?
 
Rose65 said:
So how could these things pose a threat, as is being warned about?
All very science fiction it seems.
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You may be talking about all the chatter lately about AI being dangerous ... not necessarily the "chatbots" we talk to online. AI is complex and the things that are being warned as threats (in my opinion) would be that they get so "smart" they start taking jobs from real people... and that part of it has already begun.
 
I don't worry about AI, not much anyway. The answers in @Magna-Carta 's post above just look like things a person or persons told the machine to say, no more intelligent than the programmers. Fits the old garbage in garbage out thing.

One place I understand AI is being used beneficially is in the medical profession. See: Artificial Intelligence: How is It Changing Medical Sciences and Its Future? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7640807/

What I think people worry about is giving computers too much decision making power without human oversight. Some even think this could somehow lead to computers taking over the world, but I am skeptical. No doubt some AI decisions will not be good, but that's a far cry from the world being taken over...
Rose65 said:
All very science fiction it seems.
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Don't see why it should... Dave.

 
Is it like 2001: A Spacey Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke? The way Hal the computer became murderous on the spaceship. I read it years ago.
 
Alligatorob said:
I don't worry about AI, not much anyway. The answers in @Magna-Carta 's post above just look like things a person or persons told the machine to say, no more intelligent than the programmers. Fits the old garbage in garbage out thing.

One place I understand AI is being used beneficially is in the medical profession. See: Artificial Intelligence: How is It Changing Medical Sciences and Its Future? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7640807/

What I think people worry about is giving computers too much decision making power without human oversight. Some even think this could somehow lead to computers taking over the world, but I am skeptical. No doubt some AI decisions will not be good, but that's a far cry from the world being taken over...

Don't see why it should... Dave.

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Oh, I put my post below before I saw this!
Great minds think alike.

So if an AI gets troublesome we could just unplug it! Surely it remains our slave if we created it?
 
I think those sales chat boxes are useless. Trying to get answers from them is like trying to get answers from a 4 year old about a broken lamp.
I don't know what it is, but when I type there's a faded word that pops up, after what I type. It's usually the word I'm thinking about next typing. I'm not sure how that works, but the words the computer comes up with are what I was thinking??????
 
Rose65 said:
Oh, I put my post below before I saw this!
Great minds think alike.

So if an AI gets troublesome we could just unplug it! Surely it remains our slave if we created it?
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These, I understand, can multiply themselves and reach intelligences a thousand times higher than
man is capable of achieving. Wouldn't that make us their pets?
or would the ratio be more like a human to an ant? AI would have no use for humans. Right?
 
Alligatorob said:
I don't worry about AI, not much anyway. The answers in @Magna-Carta 's post above just look like things a person or persons told the machine to say, no more intelligent than the programmers. Fits the old garbage in garbage out thing.

One place I understand AI is being used beneficially is in the medical profession. See: Artificial Intelligence: How is It Changing Medical Sciences and Its Future? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7640807/

What I think people worry about is giving computers too much decision making power without human oversight. Some even think this could somehow lead to computers taking over the world, but I am skeptical. No doubt some AI decisions will not be good, but that's a far cry from the world being taken over...

Don't see why it should... Dave.

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Some consider ChatGPT to be AI, as it’s not so much that answers have been programmed into it, it can also generate its own content. You can have a conversation with it in the same way you and I could have a conversation over the internet. Its knowledge is based in part in what has been programmed into it and what it knows from the internet, up to a certain date.

If you change the wording of the conversation you have with it, it will then change its response. I can't imagine ChatGPT having been programmed with every conversation scenario that there has ever been.

From what I’ve seen on YouTube videos, some of the conversation seem so random from the user, yet the chatbot, or the most part, respond accordingly. Unless it has misunderstood the users side of the conversation. It which case the user clarifies his or her side, and the conversation continues.
 
Magna-Carta said:
Some consider ChatGPT to be AI, as it’s not so much that answers have been programmed into it, it can also generate its own content. You can have a conversation with it in the same way you and I could have a conversation over the internet. Its knowledge is based in part in what has been programmed into it and what it knows from the internet, up to a certain date.

If you change the wording of the conversation you have with it, it will then change its response. I can't imagine ChatGPT having been programmed with every conversation scenario that there has ever been.

From what I’ve seen on YouTube videos, some of the conversation seem so random from the user, yet the chatbot, or the most part, respond accordingly. Unless it has misunderstood the users side of the conversation. It which case the user clarifies his or her side, and the conversation continues.
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VERY informative! Thank you!
but,
How many times does one have to say the words:
"I want to speak to an associate please." before he
or she is actually switched over to a "real person"?
 
Rose65 said:
What are Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence?
I am afraid I do not understand what they are and how this could affect us all. I need a simple explanation please.
Click to expand...
I have a Chatbot on my grocery orders. I can ask it a question but not always a reliable answer as it is not a real person.
I have a Chatbox on some of my other websites but they connect me to a real person.

I am totally lost about and AI so cannot give an informed opinion but answers above about it seems to be good.
 
What about the robots we get almost universally when we call a company, a medical office, or whatever? Sometimes we have to press endless buttons on the phone before we finally (if we get lucky) are connected to a real human being. Are those telephone robots the same as chatbots?
They are obviously machines, responding to our own answers or the buttons we push.
 
If you have 10 mins spare or you are bored. Here is a video of whst ChatGPT is capable of -- with random questions? If it could talk and had voice recognition, what have you got?

 

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