Latest version: GPT-4
Yesterday, Microsoft Germany CTO Andreas Braun made a statement that has sparked much excitement and speculation within the artificial intelligence (AI) community. He was quoted as saying that GPT-4, the next iteration of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) series, will be introduced next week and will include multimodal models.
The report, which appeared in the German news outlet Heise, immediately led to the renewed online chatter about the possibility of GPT-4’s debut. This announcement comes less than four months after the GPT 3.5 series was released, in which ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, is fine-tuned. If this news is accurate, it would mean that GPT-4 is being released much sooner than anticipated.
Coincidentally, Yoshua Bengio, a deep learning pioneer who won the 2018 Turing Award together with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, also made comments yesterday about ChatGPT and the potential of multimodal models. In a virtual Q&A titled “What’s Lacking In ChatGPT? Bridging the gap to human-level intelligence,” Bengio said that current work on multimodal large neural nets, that have images or video as well as text, would “help a lot” with the ‘world model’ issue. This refers to the fact that models need to understand the physics of our world in order to simulate it effectively.
Bengio also warned that market pressures will likely push tech companies towards secrecy rather than openness with their AI models. The “media circus” around ChatGPT is a “wake-up call” about the potential of powerful AI systems to both do good for society and create significant ethical concerns.
While Bengio acknowledged that ChatGPT is an impressive technological advance, he called it “mostly an engineering advance” and emphasized that it is a “very small step” scientifically. He believes that ChatGPT is more significant from a social standpoint, making people aware of what can be done with AI.
However, he cautioned that it is up to humans to decide how they are going to design these machines from an ethical and responsible standpoint. “Are we going to build systems that are going to help us have a better life in a philosophical sense, or is it just going to be an instrument of power and profit?” he said.
Bengio emphasized the need for regulation in order to protect the public and ensure that companies are held accountable for the risks they take to the public’s well-being. He pointed out that startups are willing to take risks that lead larger, Big Tech companies like Google and Microsoft to “feel compelled to jump into the race.”
While there are discussions about making sure AI regulation does not hurt the innovation economy, Bengio believes that it is important to take a long-term view of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs). He acknowledged that at the moment, companies are feeling an urgency to bring ChatGPT and other LLMs into their products and services. But he pointed out that academics and some companies are also looking out at a longer horizon about what’s next.
“How do we become the next big company in the field? How do we lead? For that, you have to think about what’s missing, what are the failure modes,” he said. “That kind of research is hard and might take years to answer. Hopefully, some people will have the vision to look beyond the immediate panic that I think is happening right now.”
The release of GPT-4 is eagerly anticipated, and the addition of multimodal models promises to take AI language processing to new heights. However, it is important to keep in mind the ethical considerations that come with developing powerful AI systems. As Bengio emphasized.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the announcement of GPT-4's potential release and the comments made by Yoshua Bengio serve as a reminder of the ever-evolving landscape of AI and the need for ethical considerations and regulation. While GPT-4's introduction is exciting news for the field of AI, it also raises questions about the ethical implications of powerful AI systems and the responsibility of humans in designing and regulating them.
Bengio's warning about the potential for market pressures to push tech companies towards secrecy instead of openness with their AI models is a crucial reminder of the need for transparency and regulation to protect the public's well-being. It is up to humans to decide whether AI systems will be instruments of power and profit or will serve to improve society in a philosophical sense.
Overall, the advancements made in AI, particularly in the area of multimodal models like ChatGPT, have the potential to revolutionize numerous industries and impact society in significant ways. However, it is crucial to approach these advancements with caution and consider the long-term implications and potential consequences. The discussion of regulation and responsible AI design must continue as the field of AI continues to evolve and grow.
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