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It would be ironic if you had to use the internet to look up who Vint Cerf is.

Cerf is widely regarded as the ‘Father of the Internet’ and was one of the early pioneers of our online experience. Now the visionary has come out with a warning to everyone who is getting hyped up about the recent advancements in AI Chatbots like ChatGPT.

“Remember that some humans using new technology aren’t always genuine, and will seek to do that which is to their benefit and not yours – be thoughtful about how we use these technologies,”

Cerf believes people should be wary of simply investing in conversational AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard simply because they are ‘cool’.

“Be thoughtful. We can’t always predict what’s going to happen with these technologies and to be honest with you, most of the problem is people — that’s why we people haven’t changed in the last 400 years let alone the last 4,000.”

The wise old dude was one of the co-designers of some of the internet’s architecture, although these days he fills the role of Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. So it might be a good idea to take his words to heart. He also believes that engineers such as himself should hold themselves responsible for ‘correcting errors’, also noting that “learning how to minimize the worst-case potential is very important.”

In an attempt to beat out Microsoft, Google launched their AI chatbot, Bard, a day before the computer giant released the ‘new Bing’. It’s this rush to be the first that Cerf believes makes much of the hype about AI pre-mature. Even within Google’s own engineering teams, there were several key designers who felt the release of Bard was ‘too rushed’ and ‘botched’.

Bard, which was released last Monday, is only open to “trusted testers”, but it will be made available more widely in coming weeks.

The speed at which AI Tech is being developed puts a lot of developers at risk of releasing innovations before they are properly tested, or even understood. The impact this could have on future technologies is difficult to predict. Check out the full interview with Vint Cerf on Business Insider.

The release of AI ChatGPT seems to have spooked a lot of people though, and a cursory glance at LinkedIn shows a number of content creators nervously explaining why AI could never do their job. Even this article was written by an AI. Just kidding, all the mistakes were man-made.

“It doesn’t always work the way we would like it to”

We would be well advised to heed these words before we turn everything in the world over to AI.

[source:businessinsider]