ChatGPT4 experiences widespread outage

Category: AI Americas Europe
Posted by Jake Graves

ChatGPT4 has seen a large-scale outage. Hundreds of thousands of users saw at least an hour of inaccessibility when attempting to utilize the seminal chatbot developed by OpenAI.

With the brand-new version of the system, ChatGPT4 being released last week this outage could not have occurred at worse time. This was an almost worldwide outage that has come posterior to a few but significant regional outages.

Speculation is of course rife with such an influential and powerful tool being disabled. The cause appears to be simply an overwhelming amount of traffic directed towards the chatbot however, certain inconsistencies have many pondering a more complex cause. A seriously well backed project by such a giant as Microsoft, it would be thought, could handle a much larger amount of traffic. As well as this, the outage effected all users including those paying a premium for a more unrestricted model.

Issues with ChatGPT4

This outage has come in the wake of a far-reaching interview with CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. In this interview he claimed that he could see AI reshaping and moulding the current society, revealing his worry at how AI could eliminate many current jobs. Even expressing a fear which he attempted to justify, but this did little to reassure many of the AIs true capabilities. Taking his claims to an even greater level, Altman even stated of his worry surrounding the use of AI by authoritarian governments let alone growing questions of AI consciousness.

To add to such fear mongering, a few news sources have run with a story that focused on AI expert Michal Kosinski who has doubts about human capabilities to contain an AI with full reign over its assets. Claiming that in under 30 minutes ChatGPT had devised, with some human prompt, a means to escape from its hardware. Such claims should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but it does raise so quiet alarms as to the long-term future of AI which is rapidly becoming the present.

Questioning the future of AI

There have been many ecstatically positive and equally sceptical opinions of AI which have gained true traction in the subsequent discussion as a result of ChatGPT4’s massive success. From the argument that AI could drastically destroy and recreate the structures and systems that govern human productivity to a level of progress that was before unimaginable, to those who are dramatically concerned about the possible spread of disinformation, or the theft of intellectual property on a multifaceted level.

Whether either side is correct remains to be seen, technology of any description, no matter how potentially sentient, will in all likelihood be ethically determined by the uses or misuses it suffers at the hands of humans.