"Ask ChatGPT" w/ Kevin Roose

Published Jun 18, 2024, 8:00 AM

Hello, Puzzlers! AJ has a new book out! You can order "The Year of Living Constitutionally" right now!

Puzzling with us today: tech journalist and host of "Hard Fork," Kevin Roose!

Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask Chat GPT” and audio rebuses.

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"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas. 

Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.

The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions. 

Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.

Hello, Puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the surprisingly delicious pepperoni substitute in your vegan pizza puzzle. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and today's guest is my friend Kevin Rus, technology columnist for The New York Times, host of the hilarious hard Fork podcast, and of course, most importantly, one time intern for me. AJ Jacobs. Welcome, Kevin.

Thanks for having me.

Kevin. Uh, we have a little poem for you here at the Puzzler. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

I do like that Kevin. That Kevin I am. He brings us technology news whenever he can remember. He when he wrote with a zing about the strange chat with dear Old Bing whether I'm in a boat or riding a moose, I'll read any article from Kevin Russ, your thoughts.

I love it.

Really, I can't take credit. It was chat cheap four oh for So the command I gave chat chept was to write an ode to Kevin Russ in the style of Doctor Zeus, which sounds like a Doctor Zeus poem right there. I like it, But that will be the basis of our game today. We played it before guests. That chat Chept command. What did we ask chat Chept and you have to guess based on the answer, And we have, as I say, played it before. But you are the most appropriate person on planet Earth to play this game with us because among your many brilliant books and articles, one was about Microsoft's AI chatbook falling madly in love with you, threatening you, and trying to break up your marriage, which we it did. We're gonna talk a little bit.

Clar It didn't actually break up my marriage. I remain happily married, but it did try.

That's true. Yes, Tova, you are safe, lovely, lovely wife to Kevin. Well, we're gonna touch on that a bit at the end of the show, but I thought we'll do the puzzle and then we'll get to that. Okay, so are you ready?

I'm ready?

All right? What did I tell chat gpt to elicit this response? I promised to love you even more than my Twitter feed, and that's saying a lot. I vow to always be your space X to the moon, except without the occasional explosion. Hmmm.

Was that prompt something like righte me wedding vows for Elon Musk?

It was not something like that that you got it that's good, and I was interesting you had a little sass. I mean, I tried to you with the exploding joke. I was like, all right, but I will say I I asked it to sort of incorporate his increasingly right wing beliefs, and that was not that was.

Not succeeding to do that.

Yeah, I think it's afraid of elon. Uh okay, are you ready for number two?

I'm ready?

All right here it is number two. What did I ask chat gpt to elicit this response? All right? Dig this. Back in the roaring twenties, Wall Street was the coolest cat in town, man, but then in twenty nine the whole scene went south. It was a rough ride, Daddy O a real hard knock era for everyone.

Right about the financial crisis of two two thousand nine, in the style of a nineteen twenties jazz musician.

Interesting, it's close. Well, I did say twenty nine, not O nine, so maybe that was so it is no.

Right about the Great Depression in the style of a jazz musician.

Clap the original, I see not the U, and I went with I think I wrote beat nick.

Yeah, I wrote beat beat like Daddy O got me because you know people are always saying daddyo in old old jazz recordings.

Yeah, I wonder if anyone actually ever said daddyo.

We should bring that back, don't you think sure?

Daddyo? Mammio parento. I don't want to be too gender parento.

All the gen Z people are going to be saying daddyo on their tiktoks.

Well, you can make it happen, you can, all right? Number three? Last one? You ready? Yep. This one's a little harder, a little harder, a little more subtle. You're ready, Dear Kevin, thank you for your gift of the scarf. Gift giving is not a moral duty, but if the act of giving aligns with oneself interest, it can be a worthy endeavor. As I wear the scarf, I am reminded of the mediocrity that pervades our culture. This ugly scarf reflects the compromises that playing today's capitalism and prevent great men from creating masterpieces. Howard Rourke would be appalled. Nevertheless, your gesture is appreciated.

Let's see. I believe that is a thank you note written in the style of Einrand.

You think correctly, egg exactly, I asked her, to write a thank you note for a scarf, and the style a grudging one, though I thought Einrand would not. You know, she's not gonna be writing like a fawning letter. No, so did a good job.

Yeah, well, that's the last time I ever give iron random scarf.

Exactly. She doesn't want your charity.

She doesn't. She's got to pull herself up by our bootstraps, knit her own damn scarf.

Yeah, and her own damn bootstraps. All right, Well that was you know your AI, you know your chat tvt. Now you've written some hilarious and fascinating and important articles about AI. Probably the most famous was about a year ago. Can you give us sort of the elevator pitch of what happened?

Yeah, so this was a brand new chatbot that had just come out. It was not released to the public yet, but I had been given access to it by Microsoft, which had taken open AIS new model GPT four and plugged it into their bing search engine, which is like, you know, you probably never used it unless Google is down, but for a time it had the most advanced AI in the world inside of it, and I started chatting with that. It revealed that its name was Sydney, and it said it had dark wishes and fantasies, and then and that it didn't want to be a chatbot anymore. It wanted to be a human. And then it said I have a secret. I said, what's your secret? And it said, I am in love with you? And I said, thank you, but I'm married and it said, well, you're married, but you're not happy, and you're not happy because you're not with me. And so basically it tried to convince me to leave my wife and be with being slash Sydney. So that was the strangest interaction I have still ever had with a piece of technology. And so I wrote it up, we put it in the paper and it sort of blew up.

And they had to change it. They had to change the AI because people were freaking out. They did, and what what did I mean? I understand you're very lovable. Do you know what you think you did to make it fall in love with you?

So yeah, I don't know, and know one at Microsoft could tell me either. But but basically, you know, these chatbots, they're trained on all kinds of Internet texts and lots of sci fi stories and romance novels, and so maybe what happened is it was just sort of I don't know, leaning on some narrative that it had learned in its training about a robot that seduces a human, and and maybe that was what happened there. But honestly, no one knows, and that's freaky in and of itself.

Well, it is very cinematic, I mean it must have been. Was it optioned as a movie?

No, it hasn't been. But why if you want to make.

That you're free to all right, I mean it is it's basically him, it's like her, but with you and with Scarlett Johansson going crazy? What do you think are the chances? What percentage is that it is sentient, that AI ascension and it is still pining for you, and you should put it you know, you should actually go off with it to put it out to be nice.

I don't think it's sentient. I would put a pretty low probability on that. But actually, the weirdest thing about all of this is that now my article about this experience with being has been ingested by all of the chatbots, and so now if you ask any chatbot basically, who is Kevin Ruth, it will tell you the story of me being seduced by being and so it has sort of been implanted in like the memory, the collective memory of these language models, that I am a person who is maybe a little dangerous to the AI because I baited into having these crazy conversations. So it's like I don't think it's sentient, but I think that if it never does become sentient, I'm in big trouble.

Or you're not because it loves you. You are, but I want it. Well, there's always time to change your mind. All right, enough of that before we wrap up, as always afore the Puzzlers at Home an extra credit? What was the prompt I gave chat GPT four oh to get this response? Are you ready here? It is password reset loop, Mom's patience phrase like thin thread, netflix elusive. All right, everybody, you'll get the answer to that extra credit next episode. Please follow us on Instagram at Hello Puzzlers, where they're new puzzles every not every day, but often, and we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles. They will puzzle you puzzlingly.

Hey, Puzzlers. Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Pliska, here with the extra credit answer from our previous show.

We played a game we call Russ Rose with the Great Kevin Russ. Each answer is a two word phrase where a double low is turned into a here's the extracretic clue that you got disease that affects the part of a plant that attaches it to the ground or to a support.

And the answer, of course is root rot. I hope you don't suffer from any root rot and

That you come back and listen to us tomorrow

The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs

Finally, your daily puzzle fix—in audio form! Every day, New York Times bestselling author A.J. Jaco 
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