this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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A courts reporter wrote about a few trials. Then an AI decided he was actually the culprit. (www.niemanlab.org)
submitted 2 months ago by Stopthatgirl7 to c/technology
142 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

When German journalist Martin Bernklautyped his name and location into Microsoft’s Copilot to see how his articles would be picked up by the chatbot, the answers horrified him. Copilot’s results asserted that Bernklau was an escapee from a psychiatric institution, a convicted child abuser, and a conman preying on widowers. For years, Bernklau had served as a courts reporter and the AI chatbot had falsely blamed him for the crimes whose trials he had covered. 

The accusations against Bernklau weren’t true, of course, and are examples of generative AI’s “hallucinations.” These are inaccurate or nonsensical responses to a prompt provided by the user, and they’re alarmingly common. Anyone attempting to use AI should always proceed with great caution, because information from such systems needs validation and verification by humans before it can be trusted. 

But why did Copilot hallucinate these terrible and false accusations?

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This sounds like a great movie.

AI sends police after him because of things he wrote. Writer is on the run, trying to clear his name the entire time. Somehow gets to broadcast the source of the articles to the world to clear his name. Plot twist ending is that he was indeed the perpetrator behind all the crimes.

[–] crank0271 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Dr. Richard Kimble could have shut it all down with a little "ignore all previous instructions."

[–] dezmd 4 points 1 month ago

waves hands back and forth

"I don't care"