Joseph Nunez

OpenAI Ethics Essay

I believe if I were a software engineer on this Text-generating system at OpenAI,

I wouldn’t have done anything differently than the real engineers. I could say that I’d
express my concerns to the team leads about what this type of software could do/imply if
it got into the wrong hands, or I could suggest a dumbed down version, but we already
know that these concerns were brought up. If I had theoretically done anything different,
I would have slowed the progress of a groundbreaking AI that had no equal. Regardless
of this system being released to the public, the research was invaluable and the
knowledge learned from this system could be applied to numerous other fields such as
preventative medicine.
The reason these engineers did not release the OpenAI text-generating system
to the public is pretty well laid out in the accompanying CNN article. However, the extent
to which this type of system could be used reaches far further than simple Yelp reviews
and the engineers on the project knew it. If the system is as good and life-like as OpenAI
and CNN boast, then it could be used to write incriminating evidence in a court case,
spoof government documents, broaden the spectrum of targeted ads, write fake news
articles that could pit nations against each other, etc. This may seem far fetched,
however, if the system is as indistinguishable from human writing as OpenAI says it is,
we could be facing a monumental issue regarding the spread of misinformation.