The online excitement, or in some cases, alarm over Artificial Intelligence continues to spread as more people dive down the rabbit hole. Bizarre conversations with chatbots have slowly been replaced with suspicions as to just how “smart” the AI is. Not everyone delves too deeply into the background information before commenting, however. That seems to be what happened with Senator Chris Murphy (D) of Connecticut. Without saying whether this was a personal experience or something he read elsewhere, Murphy claimed that ChatGPT had “taught itself to do advanced chemistry” despite nobody having programmed it in that field of study. He concluded ominously by saying, “something is coming and we’re not ready.” This caught the attention of some people who were actually involved with the development of the technology and felt compelled to straighten out that bit of misinformation. (Daily Beast)

On Sunday night, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted a bold claim about ChatGPT, saying the chatbot had “taught itself to do advanced chemistry” even though chemistry knowledge wasn’t “built into the model” and nobody “programmed it to learn complicated chemistry.”

“It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked,” Murphy added. “Something is coming. We aren’t ready.”

The only problem: Nearly every single thing Murphy wrote in that tweet was wrong.

ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn't built into the model. Nobody programmed it to learn complicated chemistry. It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked.

Something is coming. We aren't ready.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 27, 2023