#59: Anthropic CEO Says Human-Level AI Is 2-3 Years Away, How Hackers Are Trying to Make AI Go Rogue, and Fake AI-Generated Books on Amazon

It’s been another interesting week in the world of AI…with a few things we need to keep our eyes on. Paul and Mike break it all down—and then some—on this week’s episode of The Marketing AI Show.

Anthropic CEO joins the Dwarkesh podcast to talk about the future of AI.

Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic (maker of the Claude 2 large language model released in July of this year), just gave a wide-ranging interview on the future of AI. The interview took place on a recent episode of the Dwarkesh Podcast (linked in the show notes). It’s a must-listen, primarily because these types of interviews aren’t all that common. Due to considerations around competition and security, the heads of major AI outfits don’t always share in-depth their views on the industry and where it’s going. Not to mention, Amodei himself has a relatively small footprint online, so hearing from him is even less common. We’d encourage you to listen to the entire episode, but on our podcast, Paul and Mike call out some big highlights that have us thinking a little differently about the future of AI.

Red-teaming at DEF CON finding flaws and exploits in chatbots

If you aren’t familiar with “red-teaming,” it’s a critical aspect of making generative AI models that are as safe and aligned as possible. For example, GPT-4 was red-teamed for 6 months before its release in March 2023. This week, top hackers from around the world have converged at DEF CON in Vegas to find flaws and exploits in the latest chatbots from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Stability. The teams working on red teaming often find these exploits by trying to “break” these systems in novel ways and by imagining creative, though nefarious, ways in which AI tools can be misused. The Washington Post shares examples of red-teaming: “AI red teams are studying a variety of potential exploits, including “prompt attacks” that override a language model’s built-in instructions and “data poisoning” campaigns that manipulate the model’s training data to change its outputs.” The results of the competition will be kept under wraps for a few months, so companies have time to address any issues highlighted by the red teaming efforts.

Award-winning author finds AI-generated books written in her name

Author Jane Friedman, who has written multiple books and was named a “Publishing Commentator of the Year” for her work in the publishing industry, woke up to a nightmare this week. A reader emailed her about her new book which just hit Amazon. The nightmare wasn’t due to getting a terrible review from a reader, it was due to the fact Friedman hadn’t written a new book at all. Friedman quickly discovered that half a dozen books had been published under her name that she didn’t write—and the books were AI-generated. The fake titles have since been removed from Amazon, but not before Friedman met resistance from the company. Paul and Mike explain the situation…and the implications.

There are rapid-fire topics to be discussed, including Zoom backtracking since last week’s episode, and much, much more. Tune in!