BBC 6分钟英语 Should we fear chatbots?

From BBC Learning English. Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Rob. Now, I'm sure most of us have interacted with a chatbot.

These are bits of computer technology that respond to text with text or respond to your voice.

You

ask it a question, and usually it comes up with an answer.

Yes. It's almost like talking to another human.

But of course, it's not. It's just a clever piece of technology.

It's becoming more sophisticated, more advanced and complex.

But could they replace real human interaction together?

We'll discuss that more in a moment and find out if chapbots really think for themselves.

But 1st, I have a question for you.

Rob the 1st computer program that allowed some kind of plausible conversation between humans and machines, was invented in 1966.

But what was it called? Was it a Alexa b Eliza or C Parry?

Well, it's not a lecture. That's too new, so I'll guess C Parry.

I'll reveal the answer at the end of the program.

Now, the old chatbots of the 1960s and seventys were quite basic, but more recently, the technology is able to predict the next word that is likely to be used in a sentence, and it learns words and sentence structures.

It's clever stuff. I've experienced using them when talking in my bank or when I have problems trying to book a ticket on a website, I no longer phone a human.

I speak to a virtual assistant.

Instead, probably the most well known chatbot at the moment is chat GTP.

It is. The claim is that it's able to answer anything you ask it.

This includes writing students essays. Now, this is something that was discussed on the BBC radio for program Word of Mouth.

Emily m Bender, professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, explained why it's dangerous to always trust what a chatbot is telling us.

We tend to react to grammatical, fluent, coherent, seeming text as authoritative and reliable and valuable.

And we need to be on guard against that, because what's coming out of chat GPT is none of that.

So Professor Bender says that well written text that is coherent, that means it's clear, carefully considered and sensible, makes us think what we are reading is reliable and authoritative, so it's respected, accurate and important sounding.

Yes, chapbots might appear to write in this way, but really they are just predicting one word after another based on what they have learned.

We should therefore be on guard, be careful and alert about the accuracy of what we are being told.

One concern is that chapbots, a form of artificial intelligence, work a bit like a human brain in the way it can learn and process information.

They're able to learn from experience, something called deep learning.

A cognitive psychologist and computer scientists called Geoffrey Hinton recently said he feared that chatbots could soon overtake the level of information that a human brain holds.

That's a bit scary, isn't it?

But for now, chapbots can be useful for practical information, but sometimes we start to believe they are human, and we interact with them in a human like way, this can make us believe them even more.

Professor Emma Bender, speaking on the bbc's word of mouth program, explains why we might feel like that.

I think what's going on there is the kinds of answers you get depend on the questions you put in, because it's doing Likely next word, likely next word.

And so if, as the human interacting with this machine, you start asking it questions about, how do you feel?

You know, chapbot, and what do you think of this?

And what are your goals? You can provoke it to say things that sound like what a sentient entity would say.

We are really primed to imagine a mind behind language whenever we encounter language, and so we really have to account for that when we're making decisions about these.

So although a chatbot might sound human, we really just ask it things to get a reaction.

We provoke it, and it answers only with words it's learned to use before, not because it has come up with a clever answer, but it does sound like a sentient entity.

Sentient describes a living thing that experiences feelings.

As Professor Bender says, we imagined that when something speaks, there is a mind behind it.

But sorry, neil, they are not your friends.

They're just machines. Yes, it's strange, then, that we sometimes give chapboards names, alexa, siri.

And earlier, I asked you what the name was for the 1st ever chapbot, and I guessed it was Parry.

Was I right? You guessed wrong.

I'm afraid

Perry was an early form of chapbot from 1972,

but the correct answer was Eliza.

It was considered to be the 1st chatterbot, as it was called then, and was developed by Joseph Visenboum at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Fascinating stuff. OK, now, let's recap some of the vocabulary we highlighted

in this program, starting with sophisticated, which can describe technology that is advanced and complex, something that is coherent, is clear, carefully considered and sensible.

Authoritative means respected, accurate and important sounding.

When you are on guard, you must be careful and alert about something.

It could be the accuracy of what you see or hear, or just being aware of the dangers around you.

To provoke means to do something that causes a reaction from someone sentient, describes, something that experiences feelings.

So it's something that is living once again.

Our 6 min are up. Good Bye.

Bye for now.

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