Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Most expect ChatGPT will be used for cheating

 “Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”

– Frank A. Clark

It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.
E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly


Most expect ChatGPT will be used for cheating

“We’ve heard about it. We use it. But we are not necessarily comfortable with what the future holds. The Monmouth University Pollfinds awareness of AI developments has increased over the past decade, but opinion about its potential impact remains largely unchanged, with a few exceptions. Most Americans express concern about the impact of new products such as ChatGPT and offer their support to the use of AI in just a few types of applications. 

That skepticism comes even though nearly half actually use one form of AI – voice recognition – on a regular basis. One-third (35%) of the public reports hearing a lot about recent artificial intelligence developments regarding the ability of computers and machines to carry out decision-making thought processes similar to humans. This level of awareness is much higher than eight years ago (12%). The biggest increase has been among younger adults. In 2015, just 12% of 18- to 34-year-olds heard a lot about recent developments in the field. Today, nearly half (45%) this age group says the same. 

Overall, more men (46%) than women (24%) have heard a lot about recent AI developments. Fully 9 in 10 Americans (91%) are aware of the term artificial intelligence, which is up from 70% in 2015. One of the newer AI products is ChatGPT, an application that can have conversations and write entire essays based on a few human prompts. Six in ten (60%) Americans have heard about this product and 72% believe there will be a time when entire news articles will be written by artificial intelligence. However, very few see this as a positive development. In fact, more than 3 in 4 (78%) say that news articles written by AI would be a bad thing. Furthermore, 65% say it is very likely that AI programs such as ChatGPT will be used by students to cheat on their schoolwork…”


AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark, 26 November 2021 – “There is a tendency across different subfields in AI to valorize a small collection of influential benchmarks. These benchmarks operate as stand-ins for a range of anointed common problems that are frequently framed as foundational milestones on the path towards flexible and generalizable AI systems.

 State-of-the-art performance on these benchmarks is widely understood as indicative of progress towards these long-term goals. In this position paper, we explore the limits of such benchmarks in order to reveal the construct validity issues in their framing as the functionally “general” broad measures of progress they are set up to be.”


Putin issues alert after drone strikes 60 miles from Moscow; Russian death toll surpasses all wars since WWII.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered officials to tighten control of the Ukraine border Tuesday after a flurry of drone attacks targeted regions inside Russia – with one drone crashing just 60 miles from Moscow.

Ukraine authorities did not take responsibility for the attacks but have claimed the right to such forays to turn back Russia’s invasion. Pictures of the drone showed it was a small Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of close to 500 miles but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.

Russian forces shot down a Ukrainian drone early Tuesday over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post. He said there were no casualties. Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region along the border, and one flew through an apartment window in its namesake capital, local authorities reported.

Moscow Regional Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said the Moscow-area drone apparently was targeting – but did not hit – a Gazprom gas distribution facility.

Ukraine going after a target that deep inside of Russia, even unsuccessfully, was almost science fiction before today.

Plus: “More than 60,000 Russian troops have died in the first year of the Ukraine war, more than all Russian wars since World War II combined, a new study says.”