Australian Labor Party Member of Parliament Julian Hill yesterday used what is believed to be the first Australian parliamentary speech part-written by ChatGPT to warn that artificial intelligence (AI) could be harnessed for “mass destruction.”
Hill called for a white paper or inquiry to consider the “risks and benefits” of AI, saying that it could result in student cheating, job losses, discrimination, disinformation and uncontrollable military applications.
Hill used ChatGPT prompts including “please summarise recent media reports about students using artificial intelligence in Australia to cheat and explain why teachers are worried about this,” and “explain in 2 minutes the risks and benefits to Australia from artificial general intelligence” to compose sections of the speech.
Photo: AP
As use of the text-based artificial intelligence software grows, New South Wales and Queensland have banned its use in schools.
The Victorian lawmaker told the Australian House of Representatives that “recently there have been media reports of students in Australia using AI to cheat on their exams.”
“AI technology, such as smart software that can write essays and generate answers, is becoming more accessible to students, allowing them to complete assignments and tests without actually understanding the material, causing concern for teachers, who are worried about the impact on the integrity of the education system,” he said.
Hill also said that students could be “effectively bypassing the educational process and gaining an unfair advantage,” while teachers are unable to “identify and address cheating” — before revealing “I have to admit I didn’t write that.”
“In fact no human wrote that. The AI large language model ChatGPT wrote that,” he said.
In another section written by ChatGPT, Hill warned about “the potential for job loss,” that artificial general intelligence “could perpetuate existing biases and discrimination” and “could be used for malicious purposes, such as cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.”
ChatGPT also supplied possible benefits, such as AI’s “potential to revolutionize many industries, including healthcare, transportation and finance by increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving decisionmaking,” he said.
Hill, Australia’s most prominent politician on the TikTok social media app, gently trolled the Liberal opposition by suggesting they ask ChatGPT “is climate change real?” and “what do we stand for?”
In sections he wrote, Hill said that artificial general intelligence (AGI) posed risks that could be “disruptive, catastrophic and existential.”
“[Artificial general intelligence] has the potential to revolutionize our world in ways we can’t yet imagine, but if AGI surpasses human intelligence, it could cause significant harm to humanity if its goals and motivations are not aligned with our own,” he said.
“If humans manage to control AGI before an intelligence explosion, it could transform science, economies, our environment and society with advances in every field of human endeavor,” he added.
“But the risk that increasingly worries people far cleverer than me is the unlikelihood that humans will be able to control AGI, or that a malevolent actor may harness AI for mass destruction,” he said.
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