Cutting through the chat about bots: Assessing text-generating AI

Professor Victoria Rubin and her team of graduate students are currently conducting evidence-based mini studies to explore the uses and misuses of ChatGPT, and the mechanics and media 'hype' behind it.  (Background: Airam Datoon for Pexels; photo by Chris Kindratsky, design by Andrew Campbell/Western Communications) Professor Victoria Rubin's lab is exploring the uses and misuses of ChatGPT, and the mechanics and 'hype' behind it By Keri Ferguson , March 24, 2023 By Keri Ferguson , March 24, 2023 Elon Musk calls it " scary good." Others just call it "scary." Either way, ChatGPT continues to generate debate and speculation since its release last November. The artificial intelligence (AI) chat bot developed by OpenAI uses natural language processing (NLP) to provide detailed text responses to instructions and prompts, based on human-user input. The application can answer questions and assist with tasks, including writing code, emails or essays. Although ChatGPT is a relatively new AI tool, Victoria Rubin, an NLP scholar in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS), says the idea behind the app is not. Rubin has studied earlier forms of AI conversational agents throughout her career, including Eliza , one of the first chat bots, created in 1966; its spin-off Alice , and SGT Star , an artificially intelligent online virtual guide created for the U.S. Army 20 years ago, which has been available to the public for 17 years. As a computational linguist and director of Western's Language and Information Technology Lab (LiTRL) , she's well positioned to study the many questions around ChatGPT from its use to its misuse.