Understanding GPT-3 risks

GPT-3 is a fantastic technology, with numerous practical and valuable potential applications. But as is often the case with powerful technologies, with its potential comes risk. In GPT-3's case, some of those risks include inappropriate results and potentially malicious use cases.

Inappropriate or offensive results

GPT-3 generates text so well that it can seem as though it is aware of what it is saying. It's not. It's an AI system with an excellent language model—it is not conscious in any way, so it will never willfully say something hurtful or inappropriate because it has no will. That said, it can certainly generate inappropriate, hateful, or malicious results—it's just not intentional.

Nevertheless, understanding that GPT-3 can and will likely generate offensive text at times needs to be understood and considered when using GPT or making GPT-3 results available to others. This is especially true for results that might be seen by children. We'll discuss this more and look at how to deal with it in Chapter 6, Content Filtering. 

Potential for malicious use

It's not hard to imagine potentially malicious or harmful uses for GPT-3. OpenAI even describes how GPT-3 could be weaponized for misinformation campaigns or for creating fake product reviews. But OpenAI's declared mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Hence, pursuing that mission includes taking responsible steps to prevent their AI from being used for the wrong purposes. So, OpenAI has implemented an application approval process for all applications that will use GPT-3 or the OpenAI API.

But as application developers, this is something we also need to consider. When we build an application that uses GPT-3, we need to consider if and how the application could be used for the wrong purposes and take the necessary steps to prevent it. We'll talk more about this in Chapter 10, Going Live with OpenAI-Powered Apps.