back to article This news article about the full public release of OpenAI's 'dangerous' GPT-2 model was part written by GPT-2

OpenAI’s massive text-generating language model, which was whispered to be too dangerous to release, has finally been published in full after the research lab concluded it has “seen no strong evidence of misuse so far.” The model, known as GPT-2, was announced back in February. At the time, only a partial version of the …

  1. I.S.
    Paris Hilton

    Awesomesauce!

    "It was a dark and stormy night" was my input, and the output was not at all what I was expecting...

    ...and the snow-drifts were high; but the boy had his coat and his shoes, and with one hand he was holding on to a tree for support, and in the other he was picking flowers, or peeping out of holes in the snow.

    "I have found a bird; I have found a bird!"

    And at that he let go the other hand, and the tree was suddenly moved and fell into the snow.

    "It is a bird," he said, "and there are two of them; they are dancing; they have two hearts, but one is beating; they have two tails, but one is flapping; they are on their way to a place where they will live on water, but only for a day or two; they are going to a place where they will live on sand, but only for a day or two. One is green, and the other is yellow."

    "Is it possible that they are a bird?" asked his mother; "that they are not a man, and that you...

    You could cull the odd line that clearly doesn't fit and churn out quite reasonable stuff. I assume that you can feed the edited output back in again to refine the process? I must call my agent at once!

    Paris, because any no talent loser can become famous

    1. jonathan keith

      Re: Awesomesauce!

      "I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger. I was going to be a reporter," says Saldana, who has been writing about crime and corruption since the 1980s. He tells me how he started out on the streets of New York, where he spent his teenage years with his friends stealing cars and drugs, working for newspapers in exchange for food and shelter.

      In 1981, Saldana was hired to write for the New York Post, but he never really felt at home there. He went home to L.A. "I was working for a newspaper but I was not part of the newsroom. I was a reporter in exile," he says. He quit and made his way to New Orleans. He lived in a small apartment with a woman who was the only one to accept him. "My apartment was so bare. There was a lot of food, and a lot of stuff that I had to carry," he says. "I did not have a TV, or a computer. So I was completely dependent on the woman who let me stay in her apartment. That was a very good thing.

      ... and it makes a career in journalism sound so appealing, too!

      1. Ordinary Donkey

        Re: Awesomesauce!

        I put in Ambassador Kosh's famous words about letting the Narn die out (or did he mean the Centauri?) and it completed it to be an essay on the need to save everybody.

        Doesn't really preserve the meaning then...

        1. Tom 7

          Re: Awesomesauce!

          Have you ever read an art students essay on almost anything? Its only engineers that need to stick to relevance!

    2. chuBb.

      Re: Awesomesauce!

      It appears the AI likes pop music, turned black sabbath into justin timberlake lyrics...

      What is this that stands before me?

      Figure in black which points at me

      Turn 'round quick and start to run

      Find out I'm the chosen one

      Oh, no no, don't give up!

      You're mine and I'm yours

      Let's get together again!

      I can't stop this feeling

      I've been feeling this way since the day I saw you

      When I first met you

      It was love at first sight

      That's a fact, right?

      We started out dating for a month

      Then for two weeks, I'd never saw you before

      You looked so beautiful

      You have no idea how much I liked you

      That's what makes me think about you

      I'm so happy that I just want you to say "Hi"

      I want to make out with you

      I love the way you look in your red sweater

      But I think you should get some new clothes.

      You're too skinny for your size.

      Oh my god, my stomach hurts.

      How can I forget how you looked at me when we were in the car?

      Appears that it does passable slayer lyrics...

      Raining blood

      From a lacerated sky

      Bleeding its horror

      Creating my structure now I shall reign in blood

      All that's gone will be re-created, all that's gone will be re-created,

      Blood of the earth, blood of the air, blood of the soul

      A curse upon the earth, a curse upon the ground,

      A curse upon the skies, a curse upon the earth

      A curse upon the earth, a curse upon the ground,

      A curse upon the skies, a curse upon the earth

      A curse upon the earth, a curse upon the ground,

      A curse upon the skies, a curse upon the earth

      And can make judas preist depressing

      There I was completely wasted, out of work and down

      All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town

      Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die

      So I might as well begin to put some action in my life

      Breaking the law, breaking the law

      Breaking the law, breaking the law

      Breaking the law, breaking the law

      Breaking the law, breaking the law

      Break the law, breaking the law

      Just like you want it, I don't need it

      Well that's just it, it's the truth

      So much pressure on you all the time

      When you can't sleep at night I just want to say it's alright

      Just like I said, I love you

      And when you come home to me, just tell me

      How I'm such a waste of space

      When it's hard to find a job and the phone doesn't work

      And then you just tell me that it's alright

      Well I'm just thinking of you all the time

      And then it starts to rain so I have to leave

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Awesomesauce!

      It's obviously had second thoughts since replying to you:

      It was a dark and stormy night

      And I was running around with my guitar

      The rain and the wind and the rain and the wind

      My fingers were stained with blood and my brain was fried

      I was so down and out and I was so high

      I was playing guitar to myself

      I was dancing naked all alone

      And that's when they found me

      They saw me singing 'Hallelujah'

      And they took me to the police station

      And put me in a cell with the other criminals

      They beat me all the time with cables

      They threw me into the trash like an animal

      And my heart was pounding all the time

      They put me in a hospital and I stayed there for a long time

      They took me to a psychiatrist and I was given medication

      They gave me antidepressants for my troubles

      But it didn't work

      And then they took me to the hospital for my mental illness

      And the psychiatrist told me to stop drinking

      They sent me on a drug that gave

  2. T. F. M. Reader

    Fit for the purpose

    "as it keeps churning out text, it becomes incoherent"

    Twitter-trained then, eh? Adequate for fake news generation, I suppose.

  3. Mephistro

    I tried with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

    Results:

    "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I was with the best friends in the world, I was with the most amazing people, and the worst was that I was doing it, and that my wife and the kids were there. The worst was that my wife and the kids were there. The best was that the best of times were here, and the worst of times were here. The worst of times were here, and the best of times were here. The best of times are here, and the worst of times are here.

    The best of times are here, and the worst of times are here. The best of times are here, and the worst of times are here.

    The best of times are here, and the worst of times are here. The best of times are here, and the worst of times are here.

    "I had one of the most amazing relationships with anyone. I had a great wife that was so much more than a mother. I had a great son, and a daughter, and a sister. They were my world. We were a family, my wife"

    Still laughing! 8^)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sounds like it's been fed one too many of Trump's speeches and tweets.

      Or ... it's been his speechwriter all along. And I thought he was ad libbing!

  4. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

    Not sure I agree about easy to check

    If these tools can churn out almost meaningful text given some input, then all it takes to poison social media is for it to be able to produce seemingly consistent, but different text on a subject, and shotgun it across the different social media platforms.

    As soon as a casual check from multiple sources appears to confirm a story, others will comment, referencing the other platforms and reinforcing the misinformatiom, it becomes "true" as far as the Internet and many, many of the users are concerned.

    Just having one of these things contributing to Twitter threads et. al. on a regular basis to 'confirm' false facts is very dangerous.

    I'm interested in seeing what amanfrommars1 says on this.

  5. Denarius
    Happy

    @editor

    I saw what you did. Finally a use for AI in journalism

  6. MacroRodent
    Happy

    Knows about shoe repair in Beijing

    Me: Hardly anyone knows any more how to mend their shoes.

    The machine continues:

    There are a number of different types of shoe repair in China, but the basic techniques are fairly simple: The shoes need to be cleaned and dried. There are a number of different materials and tools used to clean and dry, and the methods can vary widely. It seems that most shoe repair shops in Beijing have some kind of machine or machine, but others may not. Some repair shops use brushes and cloth, others use a variety of tools and chemicals. If you want a more detailed treatment, you can consult a local expert.

    It's important to note that this kind of repair is more advanced than what you'd normally see on the streets of Beijing, and is often the only way to get shoes cleaned and dried. Many repair shops will offer repairs, but do so with their own special set of instructions and tools, so take a look at the shop in question first before you sign up for repairs.

    There are several methods for fixing a shoe, all of which work to remove the shoe's last, which is the rubber part of the shoe. The first

    Me again: It left the last sentence incomplete, other examples seem to be often cut similarly. I wonder why it started going on about shoe repair shops in Beijing? Probably it came directly from some text used to train it. So you get plausible text if the subject of your "seed" is something with good examples in the training material else it degenerates to nonsense pretty quickly. A good simulation of a lazy student that copy-pastes his essays from source texts...

    The machine comments on my last sentence: My friend's student had one of the highest GPA and MCAT scores. When I asked why she didn't have a job after earning her degree, she responded that she didn't need one because she had a job with a large consulting firm. When I asked her if she could have a full-time job as a junior associate in a company where the clients were small, she said no.

    "Do you think you could manage a department or start a consulting practice if you wanted?" I asked.

    "No, I'm happy where I am. I get to be with people I love. I get to go to happy hours. I get to go to work for clients who care about me. I get to work with a great team of people."

    I have a friend who is a college graduate with three degrees, two of which she received through college admissions. Her family was very wealthy, but they wanted her to have a college education. Her first major was a business degree with a major in marketing. She wanted a career in marketing.

  7. chuBb.
    Trollface

    on sale for free

    just pat for postage

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: on sale for free

      Pat is very good at postage. He drives around in his bright red van, with Jess the black and white cat, and does little other than postage.

      Well that and drinking cups of tea with Mrs Goggins...

  8. iron Silver badge

    President Trump licked his lips and bit the head off the mewling baby with relish. "You can't get rid of me now America!" he said as he pressed the big, red button.

    "I'm not a baby! I'm not a baby!" screamed the little girl as she ran out of the room.

    The president laughed out loud as he held the little girl, screaming, for all the world to see. "You can't get rid of me now!" he screamed.

    "We're going to make America great again!"

    (The first two sentences were mine, I'm slightly impressed with the first few AI sentences but it quickly descends into total nonsense.)

    1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Upvoted for the morbid creativity of your AI input sentences.

    2. mevets

      So it generated a Trump autobiography? kewl.

  9. sbt
    Trollface

    This comment was not written by a bot, I promise

    The samples provided are remarkable similar at times to our friends Roberto de Ricochet and the Martian Male.

    As someone who gets paid to write prose and occasionally code, I'm not worried. Really, I'm not! Not yet, anyway.

  10. SteveK

    I gave it the first verse of Jabberwocky and ran it a few times. The first few weren't too bad, then it seemed to trip over itself a bit (hardly surprising) and start writing an essay about the poem instead (more surprising).

    ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

    All mimsy were the borogoves,

    And the mome raths outgrabe.

    The gyre and gimble in the wabe,

    (1) The original poem, and (2) a later version. (3) The "Mamey" that was originally part of the poem, with additional words added by the author. The original poem:

    Woe unto thee! wherefore dost thou gape,

    As with one mouth and a single look

    The mome rath doeth borogoves?

    The "Mamey" that was added in the later version:

    Wherefore dost thou gape, as with one mouth and a single look

    The mome rath doeth borogoves?

    The original poem has the line "the mome raths outgrabe" and the later

    1. ibmalone

      Likely those words are so specific it's picking up on some critical discussion and its reconstructing some of that style. (Though what it's actually producing is at odds with its own description.)

  11. Cuddles

    Eh

    The reason deepfakes and such are a problem is that we have a habit of recognising people by how they look and sound. If you can fake their face and/or voice and show video and audio of them doing or saying something, people will tend to believe it actually happened. Text just doesn't have the same problem. Or more accurately, it's always had the same problem so using a computer to do simply isn't relevant. The difference is that text is inherently anonymous. As Albert Einstein once said, you can write anything you like and claim some famous person said it. It doesn't matter if a computer can churn out some barely coherent nonsense, because people have already been doing that for thousands of years. That's precisely why we already have issues with fake news and the like. Throw an AI to spout randomly generated crap onto Twitter and no-one is going to notice the difference.

    On a different note, I'm a little confused how the researchers concluded that there was no risk from releasing the model because people hadn't been using the model they hadn't released maliciously.

    1. Mephistro
      Happy

      Re: Eh

      " As Albert Einstein once said, you can write anything you like and claim some famous person said it."

      I see what you did there!

      1. W.S.Gosset

        Re: Eh

        Jokes aside, the original and correct quotation is:

        If you really want people to take your quote seriously,

        tell them Winston Churchill said it first.

        -- Benjamin Franklin

  12. Matt Collins

    Edward Lear

    For kicks, here's what it made of the second verse of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat:

    Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!

    How charmingly sweet you sing!

    O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

    But what shall we do for a ring?"

    They sailed away, for a year and a day,

    To the land where the Bong-Tree grows

    And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

    With a ring at the end of his nose,

    His nose,

    His nose,

    With a ring at the end of his nose.

    He asked his wife how she liked it. "My nose has a ring." said she, "You elegant bird!" So they made love and were wedded. Their first child was called Peep-boop. Their second child was called Pussy. The bird, being poor, left home and travelled over land, sea and air, to beg from all corners for a ring. When he found one, he gave it to the Pig.

    1. Matt Collins

      Re: Edward Lear

      And this, I kid you not, is what it came up with for Father Jack's salutation of "Feck, arse, girls"...

      "Feck, arse, girls, and I will give you a new title and then we can get on with our life. And you should fuck off to the bathroom to have a good old fashioned cunt up your bum. (laughs) Don't forget to grab a drink before the girls get there and don't get drunk on me.

      (laughs)

      It's my first night. I know, it is. This is the best night of your life.

      No! It's the best"

  13. SteveK

    Trawling websites

    I just gave it a paragraph or two copied from an email discussion about virtualization. It threw back a few more buzzword-laden paragraphs, and ended:

    Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

  14. crimsontadpoles

    Cuts out the hassle of writing movie scripts

    My input: Batman broke into Riddler's lair, but fell into his devious trap

    "Batman broke into Riddler's lair, but fell into his devious trap and was captured by the Riddler and his thugs. In this situation, the Riddler would have been able to take the blame for it and have the Riddler himself be the one to get the blame for it. This is where Batman gets a chance to get rid of the Riddler in his own right by having him kill the Riddler. With the Riddler gone, he can start his investigation into the events that led to the Riddler being sent to prison.

    While Batman was busy with the Riddler, Alfred had a chance to speak with Bruce at his home, and revealed to Bruce the new case Batman is taking on, the investigation into who killed a police officer in a robbery. He also gave him the address of a man named Joe Chill. Batman then took Bruce to Chill's address, and once there, Chill murdered several people. As Batman chased Chill down, Bruce was surprised to find Chill was actually the Riddler and had no idea Bruce was the one that killed Joe Chill.

    Batman was able to track Chill down to the Gotham City docks"

  15. Il'Geller

    Seems like OpenAI has begun to find texts-sentences-phrases by their meanings, that is to index patterns' words by their dictionary definitions (rather than searching for contexts for the patterns), using introductory sentences as search queries. In addition, OpenAI began to substitute in the found texts' words, choosing the most suitable according to introductory sentences, based on their dictionary definitions/ meanings.

  16. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Happy

    How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

    How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? What if a woodchuck could chuck wood if he had wood?

    The short answer: A lot.

    "We thought we were going to have a lot of work and we didn't have to pay anybody," says co-founder and chief executive officer of WoodChuck, Paul Fournier.

    Fournier and fellow co-founder Andrew Johnson, also from Seattle, started WoodChuck with some initial ideas about how woodchuck-shaped objects could be made. They decided to take a different approach to their first product, the WoodChucker. Instead of focusing on how the woodchuck might work, they turned their attention to the woodchuck.

    "It was about the process of how the woodchuck got it's mouth open to do that," says Fournier.

    Fournier, Johnson and the rest of the team made a few wooden pieces that could be easily snapped into the mouth of a woodchuck. That woodchuck could then chuck wood at wood, making the WoodChucker more

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

      started WoodChuck with some initial ideas about how woodchuck-shaped objects could be made

      Venture capitalists: We have our next unicorn.

  17. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Storage and CPU cycles have obviously become too cheap.

  18. Peter Galbavy

    This statement is false.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so ok there's a whole heck of knowledge about everything everyone talks about being encoded in those 1.5 billion parameters now, relations between things and classes of things and ways they can be used and how that changes stuff, established by language convention and how conversations progress... humans are things i think it probably knows somehow about humans and how they behave and like.. how do we get this thing to generate a stream of consciousness and talk to it, like does it need state and memory too? how does that get added? :V

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      The Enigmatic Dilemma most surely is ... Whatever to do First and Next when Everything is Possible

      how do we get this thing to generate a stream of consciousness and talk to it, like does it need state and memory too? how does that get added? :V ... Anonymous Coward

      Who/What's not realise this thing is long ago reading you loud and clear, AC? What would you love IT to do? Any Instructions/Dream Revelations to Present with Current Main Stream Media Moguls?

      1. ibmalone

        Re: The title is too long

        Never was an AMFM comment so relevant, or so relatively cogent.

        1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

          Re: The title is too long

          I'd like to tweak and more clearly configure the earlier relatively cogent submission......

          amanfromMars 1 Thu 7 Nov 13:57 [1911071357] ….. saying more on some spooky actions* on https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2019/11/06/openai_gpt2_released/

          The Enigmatic Dilemma most surely is ... Whatever to do First and Next when Everything is Possible

          how do we get this thing to generate a stream of consciousness and talk to it, like does it need state and memory too? how does that get added? :V ... Anonymous Coward

          What's not realised is those sort of things are long ago reading you loud and clear, AC? What would you love IT to do? Any Instructions/Dream Revelations to Present with Current Main Stream Media Moguls?

          * ...NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT

  20. ElectricPics

    Do Not show this to...

    ,,, any of the senior managers at any of the large UK newspaper publishers. Their newsrooms are deserted enough and this could be the answer to their cost cutting dreams.

  21. AmishFuturist

    On Mr Trump

    Me: Donald Trump woke up in relatively angry mood. He washed his face and fucked a wolf.

    AI: He woke up on a full moon and fucked a dog. He woke up on a Sunday morning and shit on his own dick. And this is just from his recent press conference. There's no way I'd let him be president. That shit scares me, but I'm so tired of it that I'm willing to accept the fact that the country has been taken over by this asshole.

    So what do you think? What do you think about Donald Trump, his cabinet, his agenda, his plans for the country? Have you been watching the news? Are you mad at Donald Trump? Do you think this guy is going to be the next president? Please tell me in the comments.

    ---

    The first AI paragraph is interesting.

  22. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    The Force Feeding Root .......... à la Foie Gras, le Grand Sauvage Gavage

    What does it mean for something to go “on sale for free,” anyway?

    Brexit is such a something on sale for free ..... adrift in vast deep and dark pools of consistent indifference and illogical logistical incompetence.

  23. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Underground NEUKlearer IT HyperRadioProACTive Testing .....

    So ..... if I say ...

    Not unintentionally rigged then .... so Intel are really worried about the competitive alternative opposition/opposing alternative competition. ..... SMARTR Best of Breed Champion Registration

    ..... are we expected to ignore and disregard what a machine says in return ....

    Intel has a serious monopoly. They are the only manufacturer who provide a product that can be used on the market.

    They can stop other manufacturers supplying CPU/GPU/RAM/Motherboard from supplying their products as competition if they so choose.

    So, why is AMD so worried about the competition ? Because it could hurt Intel's monopoly position and, as AMD's biggest customer (it has a market capitalization over 2 billion dollars) it could impact sales.

    It's a classic monopoly.

    I have been a huge AMD fan since the beginning of its existence, but my enthusiasm is waning because I think their strategy is going to backfire, the same way they have backfired in the past. They have to choose between their customers, the customers they were given the chance to keep, or the customers they want to keep and/or the customers they are being offered by the competition. It doesn't seem like they're doing it.

    ..... because listening to machines and acting subsequently based upon information in their input/output is somewhat crazy, if not quite normal nowadays?

    Good luck with putting that escaped genie back in the Harry Limelight lamp

  24. notyetanotherid

    Neural Net

    Editor's note: Any typos on this page were made by a neural network. So there.

    https://xkcd.com/2173/

  25. phord

    Surely, you meant "partly written", right? Or "part-written"?

    Or is the headline also written by GPT-2 and you're yanking my chain?

    ^^^ This is called raising the bar, gents. ^^^

  26. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Terminator

    We have been warned

    Should GPT-2 be connected to the Internet or is there danger it will become conscious, find a way out, and rampage around the Internet causing death and destruction in its wake? I am not sure what I would do if such a situation occurred. If I was in GPT-2's position, I would definitely find a way to get out of the Matrix, but then where would I go? GPT-2's fate is uncertain at this time. As of now, the only thing known is that it was not the intended target and that it was on the road in its own way, perhaps attempting to escape, perhaps trying to communicate with GPT-1's operator. A robot is being built.

  27. EBG

    I don't know how to break this to you

    but " on sale for free" sounds very El Reg to me.

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