Launching a public chatbot to see what the good people of the internet will teach it to talk about? That’s madness! As was infamously shown in 2016, within hours they may well turn it into a racist Nazi apologist. But perhaps Meta will fare better in 2022, eh?
It has built and released a chatbot called BlenderBot 3 for people (initially only in the US) to interact with. “BlenderBot 3 is capable of searching the internet to chat about virtually any topic, and it’s designed to learn how to improve its skills and safety through natural conversations and feedback from people ‘in the wild’” explained Meta.
But what about all the trolls in that wild who’ll be trying to turn it into a Nazi? “A focal point of our research is to ensure appropriate safety measures for the chatbot during this process,” said Meta. “We developed new techniques that enable learning from helpful teachers while avoiding learning from people who are trying to trick the model into unhelpful or toxic responses.” Let’s hope they work.
But watching what happens isn’t just about assessing that: how BlenderBot 3 fares should be interesting for anyone in the music industry thinking about AI, chatbots and related technologies.
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