It’s important to be aware of the many ethical concerns associated with generative AI. These include issues of equity of access, intellectual property, privacy, sustainability and climate.
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University provides a comprehensive set of resources on AI Ethics Literacy. Other general resources include:
The main popular, standalone chatbots are free and, ChatGPT has a paid premium tier (ChatGPT Plus). If these tools become increasingly fee-based, or restrict premium features behind paywalls, there is potential for inequity of access. Most of the more specific AI-powered research tools have a both free and paid models, and some are exclusively for paying subscribers.
Chatbots base their responses on patterns in their training data and may unintentionally respond in ways that mimic portions of that data. The precise content of Large Language Model training data is not transparent, but it is derived from past open internet sources and includes incorrect and biased information.
There’s a concentration of power in a few companies that can afford to develop and train Large Language Models. LLM training also has a large carbon footprint, and relies on human data annotators and feedback.
Currently, the popular, standalone chatbots require you to create an account and log in to use them. The companies that make them store and have access to your chatbot conversations. The conversations are used to improve the product and could be used to train future models.
Never share confidential, sensitive, or proprietary information in a chatbot conversation.
