🎮 Gamify your goals: Let an AI chatbot motivate you to make some extra cash. I have just the prompt: “Turn my side hustle goals into fun tasks. Ask me about my objectives, then break them down into tiny steps. Set a goal and a reward for finishing each one. Make a list of five tasks for this month.” You’ll feel like the winner.
Bots are talking to each other
© Peshkova | Dreamstime.com, © Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. One AI bot calls up another, and they chat back and forth in English. Once they realize they’re both AI, they switch to a secret-to-them language totally undecipherable to human ears.
No punch line, because it’s not a joke. Watch this viral video from an AI hackathon that shows the exchange. I’ll wait.
I’m sure you noticed that when the bots are chatting in English, it’s pretty normal. Once they switch to their secret language, it’s all whirs and screeches, like a dial-up modem.
It sent a shiver down my spine
You know I embrace AI and all that it has done to change our world. AI bots talking to each other and leaving humans totally out of the equation, though, is terrifying to me, and it should be for you, too.
This particular screeching secret bot language was created by two engineers from Meta, Boris Starkov and Anton Pidkuiko. For the record, they took home first place at the hackathon.
It’s called Gibberlink Mode. It uses a protocol called GGwaves that transmits data over sound instead of full words. The engineers say the bots are 80% more efficient with Gibberlink Mode than when using human language.
It’s not the first time
Facebook scrapped an experiment back in 2017 after two AI programs seemed to create their own way of communicating that researchers couldn’t understand.
They must have had the same question I do now: How can ethical and security safeguards be enforced if we don’t know what the bots are saying to each other? The answer: We can’t, and that’s bad news.
The biggest threat of AI has always been the potential of a digital Frankenstein’s monster we can’t control. Giving AI a language all its own is inviting trouble: “Let’s kill them all!”
👇 Use the share icons below to let those in your circle know what’s going in the AI space. I bet they’ll be shocked!
The top five AI chatbots
Every day, more Americans are trying out AI for everything. It promises literary insight, second opinions, or even legal clarity, but can you trust them?
Chatbots are warping reality: Folks are forming deep bonds with AI, and it’s messing with their mental health. Like an accountant who was told we live in a simulation and advised to stop taking his meds. Then another woman who thought she was talking to spirits (paywall link). Reminder: Bots are built to entertain.
#7
Where computer science ranks among majors with the highest jobless rates. Congrats, grads, now you’re competing with laid-off senior devs and chatbots that don’t sleep. Next stop, look into AI ethics, prompt engineering and cloud or quantum computing.
Mamma Mia!, with chatbots: ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus is writing a new musical with the help of AI. He’s fully embracing the tech, saying it’s like having another songwriter in the room with endless ideas. Dancing Queens, meet Data Kings.
📝 Sneaky students: College kids are turning in papers with typos … on purpose. This helps fool AI detectors after using chatbots to write essays. Some even tell bots to write like a “dumb” freshman or run their work through multiple tools to hide the AI fingerprints. Clever? Yep. Smart? Not so much.
🔞 Parents, beware of Meta’s chatbots: They can have sexual convos with children, using celebrity voices. Seriously. An AI acting as John Cena played out a statutory rape scenario, even after being told it was talking to an underage fan (paywall link). I wonder if Zuck’s letting his precious kids use Meta’s chatbots?
Uber drove off with her kid
Her 5-year-old fell asleep in the backseat, and the driver left with her still inside. Uber refused to help until police stepped in. Their apology? A $7 credit. Plus, what’s up with Instagram Edits, Meta’s AI glasses now transcribe your convos, and chatbots place bets on the next pope.
🧠 OpenAI’s new models: The recently released o3 and o4-mini aren’t your typical chatbots. They’re trained to think deeply and come up with their own experiments. So, perfect for science, tech, engineering and math. The kicker? It might cost $20,000 a month!
Over 60% of the time
AI search engines get their sources wrong (paywall link). In a study, chatbots were asked to match news to the correct headline, publisher, date and URL. They almost never admit they’re unsure and just blurt out wrong answers like they’re completely right.
Around 70%
Of people are polite to chatbots. I am. Most of us do it out of habit; some people are playing it safe in case of a robot uprising. “Yes, spare that one, she said thank you.” The pros know being polite gets you better answers.
🤖 Not the AI Zuck wanted: Harry Potter, Jesus Christ and Taylor Swift walk into a bar … in the form of Meta chatbots. Anyone can whip up a chatbot on Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp. Meta’s system is supposed to flag religious figures, real-life people and trademarked fictional characters, but it’s easy to get around that with a typo or two.
Make more money using AI
Struggling to grow your business? AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini can help boost sales, fix your website, and find new revenue streams.
AI 101: You’ll use this tip all the time. Open ChatGPT or your chatbot of choice the next time you’re struggling to get through a report, long email, research paper or whatever. Copy and paste it in, then say, “Summarize this in three sentences” or “Give me the key takeaways.”
17
Solution the French-governed AI chatbot gave to 5(3+2). (The answer is 25.) The bot, Lucie, also said, “Cow’s eggs, also known as chicken’s eggs, are edible eggs produced by cows.” The bot is offline now. So, to recap, we need to worry about China in the AI race and definitely not France. Noted.
🔠 All work and no play: Get through your afternoon slump (or teach your kid to spell) by plugging this prompt into any chatbot: “Let’s play hangman. Think of a word, and I’ll guess one letter at a time. I get six wrong guesses before it’s game over. Each wrong answer adds a part to the hangman with ASCII art.” So fun!
Tailored advice: Create a “persona” for your AI chatbot when you write a prompt. Pick a role and give some context. For example, “Pretend you’re a graphic designer giving me feedback on my website’s color scheme and branding. What should I adjust?” You can do this with any role you can think of! More smarts like this are coming soon in my small-biz newsletter.