ChatGPT: climate knowledge — and misinformation — at your fingertips
As AI generated language models proliferate we interview OpenAI’s Chat GPT on climate change, its future role in climate science and communication, and the dangers of relying on chatbots for accurate information.
Hardly a day goes by without hearing or talking about the current and future impact of AI on the world we live in, not least of which since the launch of ChatGPT, Open AI’s free public demo which came out in late November.
The promise is that soon enough the days of typing questions into search engines such as Google, which scours the Internet and provides results based on their relevance to the question asked, will be long gone. With ChatGPT and its competitors our portal into the infinite information stored in the meandering world wide web is still based on a seemingly simple interface — type in a question and receive a textual response. However, below the surface, each question feeds into a form of machine intelligence that both organizes information and at the same time builds on it.
From writing short stories, to creating websites, press releases and even coding, the new generation of AI powered chatbots has caused a significant stir, leaving some excited and — probably more — worried about what the consequences will be.
So, what can ChatGPT tell us about climate change and how do the answers it gives shed light on the dangers of sourcing information about issues, including climate ones, from a bot that chooses what and who to quote, and quite often without providing sources (unless promoted).
Could you start by introducing yourself?
Certainly! My name is ChatGPT, and I am a large language model created by OpenAI. I was trained on a diverse range of texts from the internet, which allows me to generate human-like responses to a wide variety of questions and topics. As an AI language model, I am not a human being, but rather a software program that uses machine learning algorithms to process natural language and generate responses. I don’t have personal opinions or emotions, but I can provide objective and informative responses to your questions.
Keep reading the interview on Climate Foresight!
Climate Foresight is published by the CMCC Foundation , a research center that develops models and predictions to study the interaction between changes in the climate system and social, economic and environmental changes. Climate Foresight is an observatory on tomorrow, a digital magazine that collects ideas, interviews, articles, art performances, and multimedia to tell the stories of the future.
