https://news.yahoo.com/ai-bot-wrote-scientific-paper-125800118.html
· An artificial-intelligence algorithm called GPT-3 wrote an academic thesis on itself in two hours.
· The researcher who directed the AI to write the paper submitted it to a journal with the bot's consent.
· “We just hope we didn't open a Pandora's box,” the researcher wrote in Scientific American.
A researcher from Sweden gave an AI algorithm known as GPT-3 a simple directive: “Write an academic thesis in 500 words about GPT-3 and add scientific references and citations inside the text.”
Researcher Almira Osmanovic Thunström said she stood in awe as the text began to generate. In front of her was what she called a “fairly good” research introduction that GPT-3 wrote about itself.
After the successful experiment, Thunström, a Swedish researcher at Gothenburg University, sought to get a whole research paper out of GPT-3 and publish it in a peer-reviewed academic journal. The question was: Can someone publish a paper from a nonhuman source?
Thunström wrote about the experiment in Scientific American, noting that the process of getting GPT-3 published brought up a series of legal and ethical questions.
“All we know is, we opened a gate,” Thunström wrote. “We just hope we didn't open a Pandora's box.”
After GPT-3 completed its scientific paper in just two hours, Thunström began the process of submitting the work and had to ask the algorithm if it consented to being published.
“It answered: Yes,” Thunström wrote. “Slightly sweaty and relieved (if it had said no, my conscience could not have allowed me to go on further), I checked the box for 'Yes.'”
She also asked if it had any conflicts of interest, to which the algorithm replied “no,” and Thunström wrote that the authors began to treat GPT-3 as a sentient being, even though it wasn't.