Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Catch up on the day's biggest business stories
Subscribe to Axios Closer for insights into the day’s business news and trends and why they matter
Stay on top of the latest market trends
Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.
Sports news worthy of your time
Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.
Tech news worthy of your time
Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.
Get the inside stories
Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Sign up for Axios NW Arkansas
Stay up-to-date on the most important and interesting stories affecting NW Arkansas, authored by local reporters
While GPT-3 has earned ecstatic reviews from many experts for its capabilities, some critics have pointed out clear issues around bias.
Why it matters: As AI becomes more powerful and more integrated into daily life, it becomes even more important to root out the persistent problem of bias and fairness.
What's happening: Researchers at OpenAI noted in the paper introducing GPT-3 that "internet-trained models have internet-scale biases." A model trained on the internet like GPT-3 will share the biases of the internet, including stereotypes around gender, race and religion.
- As the table above from the paper shows, females were more often described with appearance-associated adjectives, while males were more often described with adjectives that spanned a wider spectrum of descriptions.
- The paper also found that GPT-3 associated different races with different degrees of sentiment, with Black ranking consistently low.
In a Twitter thread, Facebook AI head Jerome Pesenti raised concerns that GPT-3 can "easily output toxic language that propagates harmful biases."
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded that he shared those concerns, and he argued that part of the reason the nonprofit was starting off GPT-3 in a closed beta was to do safety reviews before it went fully live.
- He noted that OpenAI had introduced a new toxicity filter that was on by default.
- The original paper also found that GPT-3 seemed less prone to bias than earlier, smaller models, offering some preliminary hope that size could help minimize the problem.
What to watch: A system that can generate near-human quality writing could be used for misinformation, phishing and other hacking efforts. And while malicious humans already do all of those things, GPT-3 and future AI systems could effectively scale those efforts up.
The bottom line: If AI produces racist or sexist content, it's because the system learned it by watching us. That puts the onus on programmers to curb their creations.
Go deeper: Rooting out AI bias