this is, FT News Briefing Podcast episode: “Open AI ‘Red Team'”
Sonya Hutson
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today he’s Friday April 14th and this is him at the FT News briefing.
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BP has launched a massive new crude oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Global equities have recovered from the banking crisis, but is that true?
Katie Martin
We are in this kind of dreamy underworld. As you know, stock valuations still don’t make sense. And at some point something has to change.
Sonya Hutson
Moreover, the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT is getting smarter and more dangerous. Sonya Hutson instead of Mark Filippino. Get the news you need to start your day.
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Oil giant BP yesterday began delivering crude through a new $9 billion offshore platform in the US Gulf of Mexico. This is the first facility the company has opened in the area since the disastrous Deepwater His Horizon explosion 13 years ago. It also reflects his BP decision to slow the transition away from fossil fuels. This is Justin Jacobs, our correspondent for Houston.
Justin Jacobs
yes. This project has been underway at BP for many years, but it has come at a very important time for the company. Because what we’re seeing here is real evidence of a shift in the conversation about energy security and climate. Changes after the Ukrainian War. For companies like BP, this means that in the short term, the focus will be on producing fossil fuels rather than investing in clean energy. But it certainly changed the balance between those two.
Sonya Hutson
Justin Jacobs is the FT’s Houston correspondent.
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Global equity markets have recovered to levels before the banking turmoil roiled markets in March. We’re with Katie Martin, her editor of the FT’s Markets, to find out if all that volatility is really in the rearview mirror. Hey Katie.
Katie Martin
Hey how are you?
Sonya Hutson
doing well So let’s start with the good news. The market seems to have calmed down. They seem to have calmed down since all the volatility that followed the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse and other financial institutions. Are you breathing easier?
Katie Martin
I can breathe easier. yes. It was quite a moment, like the beginning of March. A spate of bank failures on both sides of the Atlantic brought everyone this kind of horrific flashback to 2008. Would you come back? no. So if you look at the charts of global stocks and US stocks, it’s like a banking crisis. What kind of banking crisis? The obvious question is whether this is the dreaded calm before the storm. And literally every investor I’ve spoken to, big or small, is very sensitive and very concerned about the risks here, and that’s the pattern we saw in his 2008. 2023 doesn’t look like he did in 2008, but everyone thought the crisis was over in his 2008 when JP Morgan acquired Bear Stearns. And, as you know, it took weeks for the market to really collapse and the Lehman Brothers collapse. So people feel like they’ve seen this movie before and are very aware of the fact that everything could go horribly wrong. I say no need.
Sonya Hutson
Hmm. So what are investors worried about? What other shoes can fall off?
Katie Martin
multiple shoes. How many shoes can you wear at once? (Laughter) They can all fall. It can fall all at once. Inflation remains the number one concern for investors around the world. But there are quite a few second round implications that could still emerge from the US regional banking crisis if you want to. For example, what does this mean for small businesses in the long run? Should they lose some jobs? If they can’t get their money as quickly as they used to because the lender no longer exists or is still there, will they have to cut back on the investments they were planning to make? So this was definitely a big risk, and it hung on the US economy, and therefore the market.
Sonya Hutson
Coming back to inflation, how much risk is there at this point?
Katie Martin
Inflation continues to recede. But again, investors are humble, they know inflation was so wrong before, and they may not be ready to make all this clear now. And one of the potential risks for stock investors is that one of the reasons the stock market has been so strong since all the local banks in the United States got in trouble is because the stock market was doing so well at the time. The bond market, the US government bond market in particular, went completely crazy around the time these banks went bust and started pricing in a huge number of rate cuts. If it’s an overreaction and my guess is it is and it’s about to unravel, will that cause stocks to fall again? Analysts are definitely starting to talk One more thing. I mean, we’re in this kind of dreamy underworld. That’s where equity valuations still don’t make sense. And at some point something has to change.
Sonya Hutson
Katie Martin is Markets Editor at FT. Thank you Katie.
Katie Martin
joy.
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Sonya Hutson
The latest version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT is so powerful that it raises new concerns about how it is used. So the company behind it has tried to counter those concerns by creating a team of experts to test what chatbots can do. reporting on the team. She joins me now. Hello, I’m Madhu.
Madumita Murzia
Hi.
Sonya Hutson
Can you tell us a little bit about this team that OpenAI put together to investigate the dangerous use of ChatGPT-4?
Madumita Murzia
So I spent quite a bit of time presenting this piece in the ‘red team’. It’s essentially a term for people who test something before it’s released. But what they’re really trying to do is break it. They’re trying to push it to its limits, and examining all the bad things it can say by asking lots of different kinds of questions in their area of expertise. It was a group. There were writing teachers at community colleges, chemists working on drug design, and different types of people looking at different aspects of safety. And you know, they were all really worried about the kind of output they saw when they tested GPT-4.
Sonya Hutson
But how do they feel about it now that ChatGPT-4 is out in the real world? Do they feel the company has addressed their concerns?
Madumita Murzia
So now that it’s out in the real world, they continue to have concerns. Because while some of their feedback was adopted and improved in the final version of GPT-4, they feel there is a lot more. How you can elicit harmful reactions, whether it’s a biased response or discrimination against a particular, marginalized group or gender. The chemist I spoke to, Andrew White, not only found a way to make GPT suggest a whole new type of chemical that could be harmful to human health, but he also found a way to find out where GPT could be. I was very worried because I could. Also ordered online.
Sonya Hutson
So what makes this latest version of ChatGPT more concerning than previous versions?
Madumita Murzia
So I don’t think it’s necessarily worse. That’s all, right? it is more powerful. And everyone I interviewed for my article has tested both versions and found GPT-4 to be more nuanced. So the real difference is that the model is bigger and more powerful. Plus, it means there are more kinds of misuse that come with it.
Sonya Hutson
Madu, what’s the point here? How concerned should you be about what ChatGPT-4 can do?
Madumita Murzia
So after talking to so many people who have been thinking about the downsides, I’m concerned about the potential abuse of this tool. There is an open source community of coders and developers breaking open models like GPT-4, adapting and modifying them, and connecting them to the internet. Like opening the box it’s currently in by allowing it to perform autonomous actions, for example. This greatly reduces human oversight for these types of technologies. And we don’t really know what they’re doing or who they’re communicating with. it’s already happening.
Sonya Hutson
Madhumita Murgia is the FT’s Artificial Intelligence Editor. Thank you Madhu.
Madumita Murzia
thank you.
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Sonya Hutson
For more on all these stories, visit FT.com. This is your daily FT news briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
