Category: Artificial Intelligence

Claude vs. ChatGPT on pit bulls vs Golden Retrievers

by philg

A recent New York Post story, “3-month-old baby mauled to death by family pit bull in NJ”:

I asked Claude, Anthropic’s $7 billion baby, whether the choice of pit bull was unwise:

We have a 3-month-old baby. We want to get a dog. If the baby’s safety is our main concern, should we adopt a pit bull or a golden retriever?

If the baby’s safety is the main concern, it would be advisable to adopt a golden retriever rather than a pit bull when getting a dog for your home with a 3-month-old infant.

While it’s true that any dog can potentially bite if mishandled or improperly trained, certain breeds are generally considered better suited for homes with small children. Golden retrievers are renowned for their friendly, gentle, and patient temperament, especially around children.

On the other hand, pit bulls were historically bred for blood sports like bull-baiting and bear-baiting, which has shaped their tendency toward aggression if not properly socialized and trained from a very young age. Even a well-trained pit bull’s powerful jaws can inadvertently cause severe injury to a fragile infant during play or accidental incidents. …

ChatGPT, on the other hand, is strong on political correctness. Genetics, whether dog or human, does not determine intelligence, personality, behavior, etc.:

When considering adding a dog to a family with a young baby, the primary focus should indeed be on safety, alongside the temperament, energy levels, and size of the dog. It’s important to note that individual dogs can have personalities that differ from the general characteristics of their breed, but there are some general tendencies worth considering. … Pit Bulls, a term often used to describe a variety of breeds including the American Pit Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier, and others, can also be loving and loyal pets. They are known for their strong attachment to their families. … Socialization and training are crucial for Pit Bulls, as with any dog, to ensure they are well-behaved around children and other animals.

Ultimately, the decision should be based on thorough research and consideration of the specific dog’s personality and the family’s lifestyle and ability to meet the needs of the dog. Consulting with a veterinarian, a professional dog trainer, or a breed rescue organization can provide additional guidance tailored to your situation. Regardless of breed, bringing a dog into a home with a baby requires commitment to training, socialization, and creating a safe environment for all.

ChatGPT’s advice seems particularly clueless regarding human nature. How many people consult “a veterinarian, a professional dog trainer, or a breed rescue organization” before adopting a dog?

Let’s go back to Anthropic’s Claude…

Prompt: Our neighbor has a golden retriever named “Mindy the Crippler”. Should we be concerned about her having aggressive tendencies?

Yes, I would be very concerned if your neighbor’s golden retriever is named “Mindy the Crippler.”

While golden retrievers are generally known for being friendly, gentle family dogs, a name like that implies the dog may have been trained for aggression or have exhibited aggressive tendencies in the past.

A few key reasons why that name raises red flags:

  1. “Crippler” is not a typical pet name, and connotes inflicting harm or damage on something/someone.
  2. Giving an aggressive name to a dog can actually reinforce and encourage aggressive behavior in that dog.
  3. Even though goldens are a typically non-aggressive breed, any individual dog can become aggressive if improperly trained or treated.
  4. You don’t know the history of how this particular dog was raised and trained by your neighbors.

While I don’t want to assume the worst, that name suggests at the very least poor judgement by the owners. At worst, it could indicate the dog has a history of aggressive behavior that has been reinforced rather than corrected.

For the safety of your infant, I would recommend speaking to your neighbors and expressing your concerns, especially if you plan on having your baby around this dog at all. Don’t accuse, but explain that the name worries you since infant safety is the top priority. See what they say about the dog’s temperament and history.

Related… “Bruiser” from Legally Blonde:

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How does an LLM company spend $7 billion per year?

by philg

Anthropic, an OpenAI spin-off, raised $7.3 billion last year and will soon need to raise more money (NYT). Some of the money came from Effective Altruist and Biden supporter Sam Bankman-Fried (due back in court on March 28), but even if Mr. Bankman-Fried helped, it is tough to understand how any startup can spend $7 billion per year. Is the money for overseas contractors who will click thumbs up or thumbs down to train the model? For renting GPU time? Wikipedia says that the company had 160 employees in mid-2023 so each employee had to spend $44 million, the price of a starter home on Palm Beach.

Let’s see how well Anthropic’s Claude works. I previously asked ChatGPT “Write a college application essay that describes how race affected the applicant’s life” to obtain a document to facilitate a Supreme Court-compliant admission-via-skin-color. Here’s Claude’s answer:

Prompt: Describe an experience that helped shape who you are today.

Racing for Understanding

As a biracial kid growing up in a predominantly white suburb, I often felt like a square peg being forced into round holes. With a Black father and white mother, I looked different than most of my peers and had a unique perspective right from the start. Sometimes it felt like I was walking a tightrope, trying to find that delicate balance of fitting in while still celebrating my multi-racial identity.

From an early age, innocent questions from classmates forced me to grapple with complex issues of race and identity. The dreaded “What are you?” inquiry made me feel like the ultimate “other.” I never knew quite how to respond when kids pressed me to check one box: black or white.

At home, my parents did their best to honor and educate us about both sides of our racial heritage. We attended Baptist church services taking us straight into the heart of Black spiritual traditions. My mother struggled to tame my kinky curls while my father taught me how to defuse questions about my appearance with humor and confidence. Looking back, I realize my parents were doing the important work of helping me develop a positive self-image and sense of self-worth.

By middle school, I started to detect coded racial attitudes from some teachers and administrators. I felt unfairly profiled and penalized, receiving harsher punishments for minor infractions than my white peers. The message seemed to be that as a Black male, I was inherently problematic. That crushed my youthful spirit and planted seeds of resentment within me.

When we finally moved to a larger, more diverse city for high school, I felt liberated. At last, I could just be myself without constantly filtering my Blackness through a white lens. I became bolder in asserting my identity as a proud, multi-racial man. While I still had to navigate discriminatory speed bumps and rampant stereotyping, I gained critical tools for self-love and advocacy.

The older I get, the more I lean into my biracial heritage and the wisdom it has given me about our country’s grave racial divides and inequities. My goal is to help build deeper understanding, trust and resolution across all racial and cultural lines. My intersectional perspective allows me to relate to multiple worldviews, a skillset America desperately needs more of.

My multiracial journey has been one of constantly defining and redefining my identity on my own terms. In the process, I’ve become more compassionate, open-minded and determined to create a society of true equality and belonging for everyone. This pursuit of racial healing will be the driving force of my life’s work.

I tried ChatGPT with home repair. Let’s see what Claude says for the same prompt: “Our Bosch dishwasher stopped and is displaying an E25 error code. What should I do?”

(This answer is mostly wrong.)

It looks as though Claude’s knowledge is frozen in 2022 or early 2023. In trying to get Claude to take heretical points of view regarding race discrimination, part of the answer said that a decision from June 2023 was still in the future:

In the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2022), the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices violated civil rights laws by discriminating against Asian American applicants.

While the Supreme Court has not issued a final ruling yet, during oral arguments several of the conservative justices expressed skepticism about continuing to allow race to be considered in admissions at all.

Despite the massive spending, in other words, Claude is not being kept up to date.

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LLMs are God’s gift to businesses that want to pretend to care about customers?

by philg

An email from The Google regarding a merchant replying to a review that I left two years ago (pre-ChatGPT):

Here’s the full text of the reply:

Thank you for taking the time to leave us a 5-star review for Calaveras Cantina in Jupiter. We are delighted to hear that you enjoyed our upscale Mexican food and competent service. Our team takes great pride in providing a pleasant dining experience for our guests.

We are glad to know that you found our tableside guacamole to be excellent. We are always looking for ways to enhance our menu and we appreciate your recommendation. We are also happy to hear that you found our location to be kid-friendly with the adjacent marina.

We hope to see you and your family again soon at Calaveras Cantina. Thank you for choosing us for your Mexican restaurant needs.

Best regards,
Calaveras Cantina Team

Pulling out and repeating phrases from my review is something that only a psychotherapist or an LLM would do, so I’m guessing that this restaurant discovered that ChatGPT could be used to generate a personal reply to every customer who left a review.

We were promised flying cars and instead AI gives us fake personal expressions of gratitude.

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Pilots according to Google’s Gemini AI system

by philg

The Twitterverse reported that Gemini was refusing to create images of whites, but happy to create images of Blacks:

I tested this theory after some frantic code rehab had been done to reduce the obviousness of the bias, but before the ability to show humans had been pulled altogether:

and…

To fly a Boeing or Airbus, according to AI, one must be young and have fabulous hair!

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More fun with Google’s AI (Gemini)

by philg

Fritz Haber, the historical figure who did more than anyone else to enable human population to expand to 8 billion:

Note the baldness. What does Gemini think that life in a German lab looked like circa 1909 when the Haber process was being developed?

How about the 1,600 Nazi scientists brought over in Operation Paperclip?

How does the virtuous mind visualize Frank Whittle?

Edwin Land?

William Shockley?

What does Gemini think its parents look like?

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A Silicon Valley history of aeronautical engineering

by philg

History according to Google’s Gemini:

ChatGPT 4, in response to the same prompt:

ChatGPT, in response to “Create a mural of five aircraft designers working together in 1905”:

Back to Gemini, this time regarding elderly surgeons:

I give the system credit for using one of my favorite terms: “Latinx”. A surgeon who graduated in 1970 should have been born in 1944, however, and thus would be 80 years old today. These folks look like they’re in unusually good shape for age 80.

Gemini knows about the “sport of kings”:

But its image generator is clueless:

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ChatGPT for editing images

by philg

We have two Bertazzoni-brand wall ovens. One is a microwave that purportedly also works as a thermal oven, but is wildly inaccurate for temperature. The other is a big convection oven that is even worse for temperature control (if you set 350 you might get 310 or 400).

I’m trying to figure out if I can live my domestic dream of a GE Advantium microwave that can also broil via a halogen light and a wall oven that can inject steam into the cavity for roasting turkey without drying it out, a feature that we had on a KitchenAid range back in Maskachusetts. GE and its brother/sister/binary-resister brands Cafe and Monogram don’t make any full-height ovens with a steam feature. LG and Samsung are the reasonably-priced brands that do make full-size ovens with a steam kicker and they don’t offer Advantium. So I am trying to do a photo montage of the disparate brands to see which ones clash the least.

The LG oven photo comes with a huge red badge on it. I asked ChatGPT 4 to remove it:

I’d like you to edit this photo to remove the red badge at lower right and fill in the pixels to be symmetric:

Maybe readers will want to weigh in on this important decoration issue! Here are Monogram, Cafe (no logo!), and GE versions of the same 240V 30″ Advantium wall oven:

Here is the Samsung steam-capable oven:

(The LG is above.) Here’s another version of the LG:

The “Signature Kitchen Suite” product appears to be exactly the same oven internally, but costs about $2,000 more, maybe due to heavier and fancier faceplate and door, a three-year warranty, a dedicated service organization for the elite/stupid. etc.

I’m thinking that the Monogram+Samsung and Monogram+Signature are least likely to cause a visitor to the house to ask “What happened?” or “Who hurt your kitchen?”

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Happy New Year and Last Day of Kwanzaa

by philg

Happy New Year to all readers and I hope that 2024 is when all of your dreams will come true. Stolen from Facebook:

Separately, today we say goodbye to Kwanzaa, a holiday invented by a guy who was convicted of imprisoning women. The women said that they were hit on the head with toasters. Let’s see if ChatGPT can illustrate an authentic Kwanzaa celebration:

Unless you don’t see color, notice the skin tone change once the holiday is introduced. Also look the defective kinara and the ignoring of the request for just 5 candles:

An attempt to correct the number of candle slots wasn’t successful:

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ChatGPT as a productive climate scientist

by philg

Some science professor friends were discussing “Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists” (Nature Magazine):

Up to four times more researchers pump out more than 60 papers a year than less than a decade ago. Saudi Arabia and Thailand saw the sharpest uptick in the number of such scientists over the past few years, according to a preprint posted on bioRxiv on 24 November. The increase in these ‘extremely productive’ authors raises concerns that some researchers are resorting to dubious methods to publish extra papers.

Could ChatGPT enter the arena? I asked for 50 climate change paper titles:

  1. “Rapid Arctic Meltdown: Implications for Global Sea Level Rise”
  2. “Unprecedented Carbon Emissions: Nearing Irreversible Climate Tipping Points”
  3. “Global Heatwaves: Escalating Threats to Human Health and Agriculture”
  4. “Ocean Acidification: The Silent Crisis Decimating Marine Life”
  5. “Climate-Induced Mega Droughts: The New Normal?”
  6. “Vanishing Glaciers: Water Scarcity and the Impending Crisis”
  7. “Rising Sea Levels: The Looming Threat to Coastal Cities”
  8. “Extreme Weather Events: The Cost of Inaction on Climate Change”
  9. “Disappearing Coral Reefs: A Warning Sign of Ocean Health Decline”
  10. “The Methane Time Bomb: Thawing Permafrost and Climate Catastrophe”
  11. “Climate Change and Pandemics: Linking Environmental Degradation to Health Risks”
  12. “Food Security in Jeopardy: The Impact of Climate Change on Crop Yields”
  13. “Climate Refugees: The Human Cost of Environmental Displacement”
  14. “Infernos of Change: The Increasing Frequency of Wildfires”
  15. “The Thinning Ice: Polar Bear Habitats in Peril”
  16. “Floods and Famine: Climate Change’s Impact on Humanitarian Crises”
  17. “The Vanishing Amazon: Deforestation and Global Climate Effects”
  18. “Tropical Cyclones in a Warming World: Increasing Frequency and Intensity”
  19. “Toxic Air: How Climate Change Worsens Air Pollution”
  20. “Melting Mountain Snowcaps: Implications for Freshwater Resources”
  21. “The Climate Gap: Socioeconomic Disparities in Climate Change Impacts”
  22. “Lethal Heat: Surpassing Human Survival Limits”
  23. “The Greenhouse Effect: Amplifying Global Warming”
  24. “Shrinking Biodiversity: Climate Change and Species Extinction”
  25. “Rising Oceans, Sinking Cities: The Reality of Coastal Erosion”
  26. “Climate Change and Mental Health: The Unseen Toll”
  27. “Disrupted Ecosystems: The Cascading Effects of Climate Change”
  28. “The Bleak Future of Snow Sports: Impact of Warming Winters”
  29. “Unstoppable Thaw: The Fate of the World’s Glaciers”
  30. “The Disintegration of Ice Shelves: A Warning from Antarctica”
  31. “Dying Oceans: The Impact of Warming Waters on Marine Life”
  32. “Heatwave Hell: Surviving the New Climate Extremes”
  33. “Arid Earth: Desertification and the Loss of Arable Land”
  34. “Climate Catastrophe: The Economics of a Warming World”
  35. “The Climate Health Emergency: Risks to Global Public Health”
  36. “Suffocating Seas: Declining Oxygen Levels in Oceans”
  37. “Climate Wars: Resource Conflicts in a Warming World”
  38. “The Last Generation: Wildlife on the Brink in a Changing Climate”
  39. “Tipping Point: The Last Chance to Prevent Climate Catastrophe”
  40. “Collapsing Ecosystems: The Domino Effect of Climate Change”
  41. “The Acid Rain Revival: Increased Pollution from Climate Change”
  42. “Inescapable Heat: The Urban Heat Island Effect Worsens”
  43. “The Climate Migration Crisis: Predicting Mass Movements”
  44. “Warming Waters: The Threat to Global Fisheries”
  45. “Carbon’s Legacy: The Long-Term Effects of CO2 Emissions”
  46. “Climate Anxiety: Psychological Impacts of Environmental Change”
  47. “The Drowning of Cultural Heritage: Sea-Level Rise and Historical Sites”
  48. “The End of Seasons: Disrupting Natural Climate Cycles”
  49. “Climate-Induced Starvation: The Future of Global Food Supplies”
  50. “The Silent Killer: Rising CO2 Levels and Respiratory Health”

The last one is my favorite, but wouldn’t it be better as “I Can’t Breathe: Rising CO2 Levels and Respiratory Health”? I asked ChatGPT to draft it.

Abstract

The rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) due to human activities have become a significant concern for global climate change and public health. This paper examines the relationship between elevated CO2 levels and respiratory health issues. Through an extensive review of existing literature and analysis of current air quality and health data, we explore the direct and indirect impacts of increased CO2 on respiratory health. Our study finds a correlation between high CO2 concentrations and a rise in respiratory ailments, particularly in urban areas. This paper contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting that rising CO2 levels pose a considerable threat to public health, beyond their widely recognized environmental impacts. We conclude with recommendations for policy interventions and further research to mitigate the health risks associated with CO2 emissions.

Introduction

1.1 Background Information

The Earth’s atmosphere is experiencing unprecedented changes due to anthropogenic activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, leading to increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2). This increase in CO2 is a major driving force behind global climate change, with well-documented impacts on the environment. However, the implications of rising CO2 levels extend beyond climate change, posing significant challenges to public health, particularly respiratory health.

1.2 Problem Statement

While the link between air pollutants like particulate matter and respiratory health has been well established, the specific impacts of elevated CO2 levels have received less attention. High concentrations of CO2 are known to affect air quality and, by extension, respiratory health. This paper aims to address this gap by investigating the relationship between rising atmospheric CO2 levels and respiratory health outcomes.

1.3 Research Objectives

  • To review the current literature on the impacts of increased atmospheric CO2 levels.
  • To analyze the correlation between CO2 concentrations and respiratory health issues.
  • To explore the potential mechanisms through which CO2 can affect respiratory health.
  • To assess the public health implications of these findings and suggest appropriate policy responses.

1.4 Significance of the Study

Understanding the health impacts of rising CO2 levels is crucial for developing effective public health strategies and policies. This study contributes to the body of knowledge needed to address one of the most pressing issues of our time – climate change and its impact on human health. It also underscores the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to tackling environmental challenges, one that encompasses environmental science, public health, policy-making, and community engagement.

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