With the growing popularity of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing and OpenAI’s Bard, people are increasingly using these bot-based search services to help answer questions and collect information. While these tools are becoming increasingly popular, there are a few key question — and potential privacy issues — people should keep in mind before trusting them with sensitive information.
The first concern is the safety and security of your data. Many of these bots save what you type in, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT which is limited to saving your search for 30 days, while Microsoft asks users to avoid sharing personally identifiable information. On the other hand, Google’s Bing leaves room in its privacy policies to use your chat logs for advertising, with its Bard feature that allows you to tell the company to stop saving your queries and associating them with your Google account. This could potentially let them build profiles of customers or engage in predatory advertising which may be something to consider before engaging in conversation.
The second key question is the accuracy of information provided by these bots. Since they’re only able to answer what they find online, they can sometimes provide inaccurate information or cite disreputable sources. Beyond this, AI bots may even make up information and present it as fact. Moreover, humans also may tend to place too much trust in the recommendations provided by a confident-sounding chatbot.
Finally, in some cases, human reviewers can also step in and audit the chatbot’s responses, giving them access to your chats which could potentially be stored for up to four years. The potential for harm is still high here as the data collected can end up in the hands of outside companies or governments, so it’s important to consider how much information you’ll be comfortable sharing.
On the plus side, chatbots like these can often provide better answers then regular search engines when it comes to medical inquiries and can even help with diagnosing certain illnesses. But it’s important to remember that as with any new technology, there are still a few risks and potential issues to consider before using them with sensitive information.
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the advocacy group Center for Digital Democracy, sums it up perfectly: “Consumers should view these tools with suspicion at least, since – like so many other popular technologies – they are all influenced by the forces of advertising and marketing.”
The two companies mentioned in the article are OpenAI and Google. OpenAI is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco, that seeks to promote safe artificial intelligence technologies and wisely use AI. The company operates a research laboratory working on a variety of topics concerning AI, such as unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning, and makes a set of popular open-source AI tools. It also has a service which provides a safe environment for researchers and developers to create AI-based products.
Jeffrey Chester is the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights of consumers in the digital age. The organization works to promote digital policies such as net neutrality and online privacy, and has fought against tech companies such as Google and Facebook. They have also advocated for better privacy regulations and have been involved in a number of successful lawsuits related to privacy and data protection.
