There are lots of articles about bad use cases of ChatGPT that Google already provided for decades.
Want to get bad medical advice for the weird pain in your belly? Google can tell you it’s cancer, no problem.
Do you want to know how to make drugs without a lab? Google even gives you links to stores where you can buy the materials for it.
Want some racism/misogyny/other evil content? Google is your ever helpful friend and garbage dump.
What’s the difference apart from ChatGPT’s inability to link to existing sources?
Edit: Just to clear things up. This post is specifically not about the new use cases that come from AI. Sure, Google cannot make semi-non-functional mini programs automatically, and Google will not write a fake paper in whole for me. I am specifically talking about the “This will change the world” articles, that mirror stuff that Google can do exactly like ChatGPT can.
It’s not so much the inability to link sources but the active laundering of those sources that bugs me. We’ve been lucky that shady information has largely had a vibe that’s pretty easy to spot. ChatGPT presents everything with the same level of professionalism.
Worse, while we might collectively start discounting direct chatbot output because LLMs are dirty liars, scammers can now cheaply rewrite their typo-ridden weird ass screeds into something resembling professionally produced copy.
Often time scammers put a few typos and whatnot into initial contact to weed out smarter people. Mainly if the scam is going to involve phone calls or something. Scams just trying to get passwords or infect your computer might try harder to look legit.
Only because interacting with people smart enough to recognize their spelling/grammar as fucked is a waste of their time. If it’s borderline free because an AI does the work, there’s way less need to do that.
I like to think of it from a different standpoint. Propaganda and fake news has existed for hundreds of years, if not millennia. It’s just that in the past it was mostly created by wealthy folks, and now anyone can create their own.
You could even say, propaganda and fake news were the original form.