Thought Cloning: AI imitating human thinking

Author

Qamar Zia
July 24, 2023

☕️ Greetings. It's Monday, July 24. Welcome to my daily AI briefing! First time reading? join here! If you like my newsletter, please share it with your team now. It will help me greatly.

A Twitter user, Rowan Cheung, shared a screenshot of his interaction with GPT-4, asking about jobs it can potentially replace. The chatbot listed 20 professions, including "Data entry," "tutor," "travel agent," "news reporter," and "paralegal." The tweet quickly went viral, accumulating over 2.8 million views and generating various reactions from Twitter users. Some expressed skepticism about GPT-4's ability to replace jobs like news reporting, emphasizing the importance of human involvement in such roles. There were also questions raised about the accuracy of GPT-4's self-assessment regarding job displacement. Read more on this here.

The authors of a research paper published in June 2023 propose "Thought Cloning," a framework to imbue RL agents with language-based thinking, addressing their deficiency in cognitive abilities. It outperforms traditional Behavioral Cloning in synthetic environments, learning faster and handling novel situations effectively. On top of that Thought Cloning enhances AI Safety and Interpretability by allowing observation of agent's thoughts. Training AI agents using this approach holds promise for improving performance and safety. Read the paper here.

🗞️ Here are the top items from each section in today’s newsletter:

  • EXECUTIVE — How AWS is making generative AI simpler for businesses

  • IDEAS & QUESTIONS — Generative AI and Leadership, with Accenture CTO

  • LEARNING — Thought Cloning: Learning to Think while Acting by Imitating Human Thinking

  • AI TOOLS — AI-powered product discovery for customer-focused teams.

  • INDUSTRY & FUNCTIONS — Enterprise Generative AI: 10+ Use Cases & LLM Best Practices

  • WORK — ‘Training my replacement’: Inside a call center worker’s battle with AI

  • EVENTS — 2023 Houston CIO Executive Leadership Summit

🗞️ EXECUTIVE

Generative AI is gaining global attention, and AWS is investing $100 million in the Generative AI Innovation Center to help customers build and deploy AI solutions. AWS aims to democratize machine learning and AI, making it accessible to all. Concerns about privacy, security, and biases in algorithms remain, but AWS is working to address them. In Malaysia, AWS is collaborating with businesses and agencies to adopt AI technologies, enhancing their operations and customer experiences.

AI promises to revolutionize the workplace, enhancing productivity and transforming hiring and employee development. Tech teams are leading AI adoption and a symbiotic relationship between humans and AI is foreseen. AI streamlines hiring processes and aids employee retention. While powerful, AI won't fully replace human elements in recruitment.

This article discusses the importance of long-term brand storytelling and using AI in content creation. It emphasizes the need for valuable content, the significance of first-party data, and outlines steps to set up a brand storytelling platform.

In 2024, multiple elections will take place worldwide, but there are growing concerns about the impact of online misinformation and AI-generated content. Citizens worry that false information undermines society and politics, especially during elections. Trust in mainstream media and social media platforms is low, leading to a need for greater media literacy. Efforts to combat misinformation through fact-checking and other measures continue, but the challenges posed by generative AI persist. Rebuilding trust and promoting critical thinking is crucial for healthier public discourse and democracy.

🗞️ IDEAS & QUESTIONS

This video explores AI's potential, responsible adoption guidelines, and its influence across industries. Topics covered include diagnostic, predictive, and generative AI intricacies, surprising AI advancements, explainable AI, organizational AI maturity assessment, responsible adoption best practices, investment strategies amidst tech uncertainties, and a glimpse into the future with science fiction and transhumanism timelines. Business leaders navigating the AI-driven economy will find valuable insights in this episode.

Source: CXOTALK

🗞️ LEARNING

  1. ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers

  2. LangChain for LLM Application Development

  3. How Diffusion Models Work

  4. Building Systems with the ChatGPT API

  5. Introduction to ChatGPT

Source: Arxiv

Language is a crucial aspect of human thinking, enabling us to generalize, explore, plan, replan, and adapt to new situations. However, Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents currently lack these cognitive abilities and perform below human level. The authors propose that this deficiency is due to the absence of language-based thinking in RL agents. To address this, they introduce a new framework called "Thought Cloning," which not only clones human behavior but also aims to replicate human thoughts during those behaviors.

The Thought Cloning approach is tested in synthetic environments, and the results show that it outperforms traditional Behavioral Cloning methods. It learns faster and performs better on out-of-distribution test tasks, demonstrating its ability to handle novel situations effectively. Moreover, Thought Cloning offers advantages in AI Safety and Interpretability. By observing the agent's thoughts, researchers can diagnose issues more easily, correct the agent's thinking, or prevent it from engaging in unsafe actions. Overall, training AI agents to think more like humans through Thought Cloning holds promise for improving their performance and enhancing their safety and interoperability. Click on the image below to read the research paper.

🗞️ AI TOOLS

Zeda.io: AI-powered product discovery for customer-focused teams. Discover problems to solve for customers, decide what to build next based on actionable product intelligence, and create product strategies to drive business outcomes.

Research Studio: Transform your data into action: Research Studio delivers rapid, AI-Powered research analysis for UX, Marketing, and Product people.

Avian: Interact with and analyze your business data with the Avian ChatGPT Plugin.

Booke: Streamline your bookkeeping with an AI-driven single app

Hirebrain: Discover jobs with AI-powered platform. Analyze and improve your CV, and connect with the right companies faster.

Disclaimer: 1) The tool descriptions may include messaging from each tool site. 2) Please thoroughly read the site details before using and/or acquiring any of the tools listed above.

🗞️ INDUSTRY & FUNCTION

Not just a chatbot, but a doctor; soon, Chinese may question whether they're consulting a real doctor or one driven by generative AI like ChatGPT, as online medical consultations become commonplace for smartphone users in the country.

Tax authorities worldwide are exploring AI, particularly Chat GPT-based natural language tools, for three main goals: detecting tax fraud, improving the taxpayer experience, and increasing operational efficiencies. However, there are risks, as seen with the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration's scandal involving AI algorithm errors. Privacy concerns also arise, with Italy temporarily banning Chat GPT due to a data breach. Despite challenges, many countries have successfully implemented AI in tax administration, benefiting efficiency and compliance.

Generative AI (GenAI) offers unique opportunities for large enterprises, enabling them to build their own models without sharing private data. However, challenges include exposing proprietary data to competitors, biases in models, and the need for explainability. To leverage GenAI effectively, enterprises should follow guidelines related to consistency, control, ethical training, explainability, fairness, licensing, security, and sustainability. They can build models through three approaches: BYOM, fine-tuning, or RLHF. Enterprises can also use APIs and existing models before building their own. GenAI use cases include knowledge management, language translation, customer service, and industry-specific applications.

🗞️ WORK

A Twitter user, Rowan Cheung, shared a screenshot of his interaction with GPT-4, asking about jobs it can potentially replace. The chatbot listed 20 professions, including "Data entry," "tutor," "travel agent," "news reporter," and "paralegal." The tweet quickly went viral, accumulating over 2.8 million views and generating various reactions from Twitter users. Some expressed skepticism about GPT-4's ability to replace jobs like news reporting, emphasizing the importance of human involvement in such roles. There were also questions raised about the accuracy of GPT-4's self-assessment regarding job displacement.

The article discusses the impact of AI on customer service jobs at AT&T's call center. Workers fear potential job losses due to automation. While AI may create new jobs, it also poses challenges for workers' job security and trust in the company. Labor unions are getting involved in advocating for workers' interests in the face of increasing AI adoption.

Australian businesses are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) programs to enhance their operations. Marina Pullin, a small business owner, replaced staff with an AI program called ChatGPT, resulting in exceptional results and a 2,000% increase in engagement. However, this trend also leaves some jobs vulnerable. Erin Arnett, a copywriter, believes AI-generated content lacks the human touch for nuanced tasks. AI expert Professor Toby Walsh suggests that while some jobs may be replaced, the future of employment is more about job changes than overall job losses or gains. He believes AI will create new jobs and boost productivity. Musician Charlie Chan has embraced AI, creating an AI assistant called ChAI to emulate their musical style and ease their workload during performances. Another example of AI integration is found in SwarmFarm Robotics, a company using AI-integrated robots for sustainable agriculture, aiming to stimulate rural communities and bring people back to agriculture.

🗞️ EVENTS

Economic challenges are hindering technology executives and C-suite members in achieving strategic goals in 2023. However, they have opportunities to foster collaboration, leverage AI and other technologies, and secure a global digital agenda. These trends will be discussed at the 2023 Houston CIO Executive Leadership Summit.

🗞️ JUST FOR FUN

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