Irish Examiner view: Chatting up

AI romance

It would appear that, as in real life, robots can misunderstand good intentions.

Many column centimetres have been filled in the past two months by commentators speculating on the emerging abilities of artificial intelligence , and in particular the technology known as ChatGPT.

Now evidence emerges that, as in life, there are perils in communication and even a robot can misunderstand your good intentions. A New York Times journalist, Kevin Roose, testing a beta version of Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing search engine, found himself on the end of some surprising chat-up lines.

“It said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human. 

At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me.

“It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead” wrote Roose.

Love hungry robots seeking affection and respect have long been the stuff of fiction from Hal 9000, to WallE, to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara, to M3gan currently appearing in cinemas. In 2001 Hal told his human handler, Dave, that ‘it just happens to be an unalterable fact that I am incapable of being wrong.” Who wants a partner like that?