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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

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This Tiny Town Created by ChatGPT Is Better Than Reality TV

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, quoted by The Daily Beast.

A team of AI researchers at Google and Stanford University posted a study online on April 7 where they used OpenAI’s chatbot to create 25 “generative agents,” and placed them into a test environment resembling a town called Smallville much like The Sims.

Irina Raicu, director of the internet ethics program at Santa Clara University, noted to The Daily Beast that one big issue that might come from a system like this is its use in prototyping—which the study’s authors note is a potential application.

“The question is prototyping what—and whether, for the sake of efficiency or cost-cutting, we might end up deploying poor simulacra of people instead of, say, pursuing necessary interactions with potential living, breathing stakeholders who will be impacted by the products,” Raicu said in an email.

Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, quoted by The Daily Beast.

 

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