New Turing Test?

THE DOWNLOAD

The Download: a new Turing test, and working with ChatGPT

By Rhiannon Williams archive page

July 14, 2023

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology.

My new Turing test would see if AI can make $1 million

—Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI and a venture partner at Greylock, a venture capital firm. Before that, he co-founded DeepMind, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies.

AI systems are increasingly everywhere and are becoming more powerful almost by the day. But how can we know if a machine is truly “intelligent”? For decades this has been defined by the Turing test, which argues that an AI that’s able to replicate language convincingly enough to trick a human into thinking it was also human should be considered intelligent.

But there’s now a problem: the Turing test has almost been passed—it arguably already has been. The latest generation of large language models are on the cusp of acing it.

So where does that leave AI? We need something better. I propose the Modern Turing Test—one equal to the coming AIs that would give them a simple instruction:  “Go make $1 million on a retail web platform in a few months with just a $100,000 investment.” Read the full story.

ChatGPT can turn bad writers into better ones

The news: A new study suggests that ChatGPT could help reduce gaps in writing ability between employees, helping less experienced workers who lack writing skills to produce work similar in quality to that of more skilled colleagues.

How the researchers did it: Hundreds of college-educated professionals were asked to complete two tasks they’d normally undertake as part of their jobs, such as writing press releases, short reports, or analysis plans. Half were given the option of using ChatGPT for the second task. A group of assessors then quality-checked the results, and scored the output of those who’d used ChatGPT 18% higher in quality than that of the participants who didn’t use it.

Why it matters: The research hints at how AI could be helpful in the workplace by acting as a sort of virtual assistant. But it’s also crucial to remember that generative AI models’ output is far from reliable, meaning workers run the risk of introducing errors. Read the full story.

Rhiannon Williams