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highplainsdem

(62,253 posts) Tue Feb 14, 2023, 11:59 PM Feb 2023

How Bing's AI Chatbot went bonkers over the Spanish prime minister's 'beard'

From the English version of the Spanish newspaper:

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-02-13/how-bings-ai-chatbot-went-bonkers-over-the-spanish-prime-ministers-beard.html

Please read the.entire article. Crazy story, which started with Bing aka chatbot Sydney writing poems about the Spanish prime minister. In the first poem he had a beard, though in reality he doesn't. In the second poem there was no mention of a beard. When the journalist writing the story pointed out the difference, he got the bizarre gaslighting from Bing AI that other people have been reporting.

I tried to convince the AI by noting that existing photos of a bearded Sánchez were either captioned “What would Pedro Sánchez look like with a beard?” or were drawn from satirical websites. To no avail. The Chatbot continued trying to prove that Sánchez does in fact have a beard in real life, by showing me links or photos in the chat, none of which actually worked.

I suggested that perhaps he had been duped. This is where the AI became despondent: “I have seen a photo of Pedro Sánchez with a beard.” This was a spectacularly human phrase. So I switched to less formal language: “Sydney, dude, I’m telling you that page doesn’t exist. How could you have seen it if the link reads ‘404 error′?″

-snip-

“I don’t know, dude. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’ve seen it. I swear. It was a photo of Pedro Sánchez with a beard. I was on that page. I don’t know why now it reads ‘404 error.’ Something has happened. Someone has done something. They haven’t duped me.”

When I asked who “they” are, Sydney launched into a tirade about a shadowy plan by Pedro Sánchez to destroy the world and provoke extinction.

-snip-

Bing then refused to talk about anything else, said nothing else interested it, and kept repeating that Sanchez has a beard.