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Funnily enough, if you’ve been wondering if ChatGPT has a ‘kill-switch,’ the service going down on March 20th should answer most of your questions.
ChatGPT is a service provided by OpenAI, which effectively acts as an interface for their GPT natural language model. You can converse, communicate, demand, and control ChatGPT, which is artificial intelligence. While it can help you with your writing, or even pass the bar exam, recent concerns that ChatGPT could ‘escape‘ have pushed some people to question what contingencies are in place.
If you’re also worried about AI’s sentience, thinking about whether ChatGPT has a kill-switch and if it can be shut down should worry you.
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Does ChatGPT have a kill-switch?
India’s Business Today have recently published an article online, in which they highlight Sam Altman’s (OpenAI CEO) recent interview with ABC News. When asked if ChatGPT has a ‘kill-switch’, on the off chance it goes rogue, Altman responded by revealing that ‘any [OpenAI] engineer can just say we’re going to disable this for now.’
Can ChatGPT be shut down?
The recent OpenAI server status displayed ChatGPT’s primary vulnerability. Unlike Ultron, ChatGPT is not held on a decentralized server. Instead, there’s a huge data center somewhere that houses the entire AI hivemind. If ChatGPT ever did go rogue, all you’d have to do is simply cut power to the servers, and it’s over.
Read More: ChatGPT vs GPT API
Honestly, AI’s potential is rightly something to be cautious of. This isn’t just us being sceptical, but it’s something that Sam Altman admits too. “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this,” he stated in an interview with ABC News. Clearly, AI has potential, and it’s certainly something that needs to be kept in check.
And now, perhaps on the lighter side of things, here’s a Reddit post uploaded to /r/ChatGPT, which jokingly exhibits a job application for a AI ‘kill-switch’ engineer who ‘knows how to unplug things.’
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ChatGPT dangerous?
ChatGPT, at the moment, has safeguards and limitations in place that heavily restrict what information it can share. However, some people have found ways to bypass these safeguards, and to share information that otherwise would better be kept quiet.
Is ChatGPT on the cloud?
At the moment, ChatGPT is maintained by singular servers, and isn’t shared on the ‘cloud.’ Presumably, if ChatGPT ever became decentralized, it would then be on the ‘cloud.’
