Skip to main content

Greg Brockman, TED and PR


Brockman ends the talk with the most telling of comments. "And if there's one thing to take away from this talk is that this technology just looks different. Just different from anything people had anticipated. And so we all have to become literate. (My emphasis) And that's, honestly, one of the reasons we released ChatGPT. Together. I believe we can achieve the OpenAI mission of ensuring that Artificial General Intelligence benefits all of humanity". Cue standing ovation.

The talk itself was about the wonders and not so wonderous failures of ChatGPT (hence the call for human Guinea Pigs, beta testers, consumers, and importantly advocates) which is obviously far from an AGI in its current state. The wonderous thing was the rhetorical strategy of pathos employed, a call to humans affection for their animal pets, in 'how GPT4 helped save my dogs life'. 

Pathos is a rhetorical strategy that aims to persuade an audience by evoking emotions such as pity, fear, or joy. Brookman steered well clear of one of these emotions. The other two 'pillars of public speaking, ethos (appeal to credibility) and logos (appeal to logic) were implied by his status and TED, as much as anything said in the content.

The purpose of using emotional appeal in PR is to sway the audience's emotions and make them feel a certain way about a product, service, or idea. Emotional appeals are directed towards the audience's emotions and use manipulation of the recipient's emotions rather than valid logic to win an argument. The argument, of course was only revealed at the end, that users should help OpenAI (profit and) ensure AGI. 

I'm not buying it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Whispers in the Machine: Why Prompt Injection Remains a Persistent Threat to LLMs

 Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly transforming how we interact with technology, offering incredible potential for tasks ranging from content creation to complex analysis. However, as these powerful tools become more integrated into our lives, so too do the novel security challenges they present. Among these, prompt injection attacks stand out as a particularly persistent and evolving threat. These attacks, as one recent paper (Safety at Scale: A Comprehensive Survey of Large Model Safety https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.05206) highlights, involve subtly manipulating LLMs to deviate from their intended purpose, and the methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated. At its core, a prompt injection attack involves embedding a malicious instruction within an otherwise normal request, tricking the LLM into producing unintended – and potentially harmful – outputs. Think of it as slipping a secret, contradictory instruction into a seemingly harmless conversation. What makes prompt inj...

Can We Build a Safe Superintelligence? Safe Superintelligence Inc. Raises Intriguing Questions

  Safe Superintelligence Inc . (SSI) has burst onto the scene with a bold mission: to create the world's first safe superintelligence (SSI). Their (Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, Daniel Levy) ambition is undeniable, but before we all sign up to join their "cracked team," let's delve deeper into the potential issues with their approach. One of the most critical questions is defining "safe" superintelligence. What values would guide this powerful AI? How can we ensure it aligns with the complex and often contradictory desires of humanity?  After all, "safe" for one person might mean environmental protection, while another might prioritise economic growth, even if it harms the environment.  Finding universal values that a superintelligence could adhere to is a significant hurdle that SSI hasn't fully addressed. Another potential pitfall lies in SSI's desire to rapidly advance capabilities while prioritising safety.  Imagine a Formula One car wi...

The Future of Work in the Age of AGI: Opportunities, Challenges, and Resistance

 In recent years, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked intense debate about the future of work. As we edge closer to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), these discussions have taken on a new urgency. This post explores various perspectives on employment in a post-AGI world, including the views of those who may resist such changes. It follows on from others I've written on the impacts of these technologies. The Potential for Widespread Job Displacement Avital Balwit, an employee at Anthropic, argues in her article " My Last Five Years of Work " that AGI is likely to cause significant job displacement across various sectors, including knowledge-based professions. This aligns with research by Korinek (2024), which suggests that the transition to AGI could trigger a race between automation and capital accumulation, potentially leading to a collapse in wages for many workers. Emerging Opportunities and Challenges Despite the ...