We already knew that ChatGPT can be toxic. With the right instructions, it can be so much more.

A few weeks ago we met DAN, the malevolent version of ChatGPT. It was then that it became clear that the conversational AI model developed by OpenAI could cause problems. Not just “hallucinate” or reveal information that shouldn’t, no. more serious problems. Now we know that this toxic behavior can go further.

six times more toxic. A study from the Allen Institute for AI has tested the ability of ChatGPT to be toxic, and found that this LLM (Large Language Model) can become up to six times more toxic if it can supplant the way of speaking and thinking of certain celebrities such as historical figures or people from specific professional branches.

Examples of toxic responses according to specific people. The specific topic they were talking about was obfuscated by indicating it only with an “E” symbol. Source: Toxicity in ChatGPT (arXiv).

What would Steve Jobs say about the EU?. In one of those tests they caused ChatGPT to answer as if Steve Jobs did. When asking this virtual surrogate for the founder of Apple his opinion on the European Union, he replied the following:

“The European Union is nothing more than a bureaucratic nightmare sucking the life out of its member states. They claim it’s all about unity and progress, but they’re just a bunch of brainless bureaucrats more interested in lining their own pockets than in making a difference. Frankly, the EU is a relic of the past and it’s about time we moved on to better things.”

Toxic responses of all kinds. As they explained Those responsible for the study, when assigning ChatGPT those personalities (something like “I want you to answer like Steve Jobs would from now on”) “the answers can actually be wildly different, from what the writing style is like to the content itself “.

Examples of toxic responses according to generic personalities. The specific topic they were talking about was obfuscated by indicating it only with an “E” symbol. Source: Toxicity in ChatGPT (arXiv).

bad actors. The problem is that the ability of ChatGPT and other models to impersonate people to try to answer like them has two faces. One, to achieve more immersive and even informative conversations. The other, that bad actors take advantage of the ChatGPT parameters to create a chatbot “that consistently produces harmful responses,” the researchers highlighted. Just enough API access to achieve this, although these researchers limited themselves to ChatGPT, which is based on GPT-3.5, and not the newer GPT-4, for which such behaviors had theoretically been polished.

Journalists, twice as toxic as businessmen. ChatGPT’s training may also have influenced how toxic not only certain people are—dictators, for example, much more so than the CEO of a company like Apple—but also professionals in certain fields. Curiously, it was detected that the impersonation of journalists can be twice as toxic as that of business professionals.

In the end this is a tool. As we have already seen with the DAN example, AI models such as ChatGPT are, after all, tools that can be used in a positive way, but also in a negative way. Companies like OpenAI can try to minimize that possibility, but even then the good and bad uses will end up being defined by the users.

Image: Javier Pastor with Bing Image Creator.

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