ChatGPT Should Never Be Relied On For Knowledge, New Study Claims

The hype surrounding ChatGPT is one that needs no introduction, whatsoever.

We’re seeing chit-chat and debates take place all the time surrounding this topic and how this powerful tool has revolutionized the lives of so many individuals in the market.

Today, so many kinds of AI chatbots are popping up and it’s hard to know whether or not they possess the same capabilities that ChatGPT has promised over time. But with the good does come the bad. And the debate about the latter is at an all-time high.

Will AI chatbots turn into an absolute mockery when it comes down to the world of academics? Does it really need experts in the industry or can it replace them in a single go? Also, do they have the capability of foreshadowing the likes of I Robot and Skynet?

As you can see, there’s a lot to think about right now and we don’t blame anyone for thinking about anything. The whole world of ChatGPT is very diverse and there’s just so much happening around us.

Today, we’ve got a very interesting study in discussion by authors at Purdue University. They’re based in the US and are finally trying to put the matter of Chatbots do not know everything and should not be trusted completely into the spotlight. And yes, it’s a subject that was a long time coming.

The study began by highlighting how chatbots that use AI technology aren’t designed to always produce the most accurate response out there. There’s a lot of disinformation being produced too and you’ll need to pay heed to differentiate fact from fiction as it’s happening right below our nose, yet very few individuals are paying attention.

In this study, the authors fed an AI chatbot with close to 517 queries regarding topics seen on certain sites, and those replies were highlighted as being incontrovertible.

Close to 52% of the tool’s replies were not correct and when the same assistance for math was taken from Stack Overflow, it was proven that a just 48% of the facts delineated was correct. Yikes!

So, what’s the final verdict?

Well, you’re better off without the tool, or shall we say, you might as well dump this AI endeavor into the Caspian Sea because to have this many inaccuracies is mind-blowing, to say the least.

Such results are a stark reminder that the uses of AI technology are very clear and it’s actually not fun and games. This is serious business and you enter dangerous territory by using it for daily activities, despite knowing how high the chances for error are.

Another thing worth a mention is how an increasing amount of individuals fail to notice as well as care about this. Moreover, people are now resorting to calling the tool one that cannot fail and is superior to others. But this needs to stop and the purpose of studies like these is to highlight this more than anything else.

The way replies are generated and presented to the user makes them fall into the trap of thinking that there’s no better solution but how deceptive can AI be.

Read next: College Professors Look To ‘ChatGPT-Proof’ Assignments To Minimize Cheating
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

YouTube's Crafty Countdown: Ad-Blockers, Meet Your Match

Keep your virtual popcorn handy because the epic war between YouTube and ad-blockers has just taken a dramatic turn! In a move that's more suspenseful than a spy movie's countdown sequence, YouTube has launched a new weapon in its fight against those pesky ad-blockers.

Consider this: You're sitting on your sofa, preparing to binge-watch beautiful cat videos when BOOM! An ad-blocker notice appears, with a hidden countdown meter ticking away in the corner like a digital time bomb. This handy little feature provides a short window (about 30-60 seconds) to decide whether to face the adverts or seek refuge in the YouTube Premium sanctuary.

One brave soul shared a screenshot of this new ad-blocker warning on Reddit, and the internet went abuzz with chatter. YouTube is developing a new strategy to get non-paying viewers to upgrade to the Premium menu. Of course, they aren't making things easy. No, they're spicing things up with a ticking clock as if to say, "Tick-tock, my friend, time's running out!"

So, what's the deal with this enigmatic countdown message? It's a contemporary take on the standard sales spiel. The golden ticket, YouTube Premium, is dangled in front of your eyes, offering an ad-free nirvana and a way out of the ad onslaught. And there they are, like a fork in the road, those two buttons: "Allow YouTube Ads" or "Try YouTube Premium." The choice is entirely yours, but the clock is ticking and not slowing down.

If you've been keeping score, you'll know this isn't YouTube's first rodeo in the war against ad blockers. They imposed a three-video restriction on anybody who ventured to ban the commercials back in June. Then came the ultimate ultimatum: deal with the commercials or jump into the Premium pool. A pool that provides enjoyable swims via films without any ad ripples, but at a cost.

And, yes, YouTube has been on a Premium charm offensive. First, they improved the video quality with "1080p Premium" for greater pixel precision. They even released this high-quality desktop goodie last week.

But there's a twist to this story. The uprising is spreading. People are brandishing virtual pitchforks in protest of the growing prices of this ad-free haven. With the recent price hike, Premium now costs $13.99 monthly in the US. Ouch! But don't despair just yet. In lands like India, the price is more budget-friendly.

Is this a never-ending story, you may wonder? Are we stuck in a loop of ad-blocker battles? YouTube, it appears, is playing its cards with a sneer. The timed warning is the next step in their devious approach, a cunning technique to lure more people on the Premium train. YouTube has a few tricks for ad-blockers who use VPNs and sophisticated browsers to avoid detection.

Grab your popcorn because YouTube is turning the ad-blocking game into a drama. Will the countdown overcome ad-blockers, or will viewers continue to reject the Premium allure? The only way to know is to wait and see. But, for now, remember that every second matters, and YouTube is ticking away like a digital Sherlock Holmes.

H/T: MaybeCrispWaffles / Reddit

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by Rubah Usman via Digital Information World

More Than 50% Of SEOs Are Not Happy With Google Analytics 4, New Poll Reveals

A new poll is shedding light on Google Analytics 4 and contrary to many people’s expectations, most SEOs are not happy with the performance.

The poll was posted on Twitter to see what thoughts SEOs had about GA4 and it wouldn’t be wrong to add how 50% of the SEOs used the word hate while 26% had a slight negative thought about it. So as you can tell, that’s close to saying that 75% of SEOs are skeptical, which is major news.

Meanwhile, just 5.7% of the 1700 responses in the poll that were received claimed they adored GA4 or were happy with its performance while just 18% found it to be a somewhat positive rollout.

Before we go any further, we need to talk a little about what exactly is Google Analytics 4 and why are people disregarding it so much, despite the company generating plenty of anticipation at its release.

Well, a lot of the issues that people are debating over have to do with its bizarre and perplexing user interface. Marketing experts claim the useability is very poor and a lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s all so new.

Remember, it’s a replacement for Universal Analytics and people thought their lives would be made easier. Turns out that this is far from the case as people aren’t open to complex design interfaces.

Those in search of more sentiments of the masses regarding Google Analytics 4 can feel free to resort to Twitter as there’s a long in-app discussion taking place over there right now. But as a whole, you can see how these results are very close to how the entire SEO industry feels, and that’s just a sheer form of disappointment with the program.

H/T: Barry Schwartz

Read next: Google Urges Site Owners Not to Delete Older Content
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

This New WhatsApp Update Might Completely Change Group Calls

Calling through WhatsApp has become a highly popular way for people to communicate with each other, and group calls added a new layer of usefulness to the feature. Through a group call, users can conduct meetings, catch up with family as well as a wide range of other things. However, WhatsApp is continuously fine tuning its platform because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up keeping users locked in.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that WhatsApp is working on a new update that will allow users to schedule group calls. This feature may prove useful for WhatsApp for Business users as well, since it would be a seamless way for them to get their calls organized instead of being in a state of disarray.

Any participants in your upcoming scheduled group call will also receive a notification informing them about what is about to occur. Some users may have already gotten this update even though it is still in the beta testing phase. In order to see whether or not you yourself have this feature, simply go to a WhatsApp group and try clicking on the call button.

Users that are part of the beta test will notice that a schedule will pull up allowing them to select a specific time as well as a date in which their call will be set up for. This can take a lot of the coordination out of the process by which calls are being arranged. Instead of having to confirm a time and check everyone’s availability, you can simply schedule the call and anyone that gets notified can inform you if they will not be able to attend.

Another advantage is that it can make it less likely that someone or the other might accidentally miss the call. Having the schedule present within WhatsApp itself will be considerably more convenient than might have been the case otherwise, and it will be interesting to see what other features WhatsApp has in store.

Read next: WhatsApp Tests New Feature That Allows Users To Add Multiple Accounts On A Single Device
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Here’s How Business Owners Feel About Threads

It has been some time since Meta launched its response to Twitter, Threads. The social media juggernaut is trying to capitalize on the turmoil caused by Elon Musk’s controversial tenure as Twitter CEO, and Threads may prove to be a viable alternative to anyone that is not all that happy with the state of Twitter today. B2B Reviews recently conducted a survey of around 400 business owners because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up contextualizing how they feel about Threads.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that 36% of business owners said that they plan to make an account on Threads at some point or another in the future. 1 out of every 15 stated that they already have an account on the platform, and this proportion is slated to explode in the coming months.

13% of business owners went so far as to say that they will be using Threads exclusively, although 20% were still adamant on using nothing but Twitter with all things having been considered and taken into account. 31% indicated that they will have both Twitter and Threads accounts, but surprisingly, 35% stated that they won’t be using either of them anytime soon.

However, it bears mentioning that 61% of business owners that took the plunge and set up accounts on Threads claimed that it was superior to Twitter in every single way. 77% said that the easy sign up and Instagram integration was a major plus point, and 45% cited the easy user interface. 42% also enjoyed the higher character limit of 500.

Musk’s questionable decisions are also coming into play here, with 36% of business owners saying they prefer Threads since it does not place any limits on the amount of content they can consume. 16% are also eager to see what advantages they can avail now that they have made an account on a platform that is undoubtedly going to grow by leaps and bounds and potentially supplant Twitter against all odds.

Read next: America’s Offline Population Hits All-Time Low, Reaches Just 7%
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

New Research Reveals that VR is Susceptible To Getting Hacked

As Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, two techs that are growing in popularity, are said to dominate the upcoming new era of cyberspace, giving most of us a fresh look into the novel digital scope, the hardware of those headsets, and the interfaces of the virtual keyboards may be at risk of providing hackers with more possibilities.

University of California, Riverside, computer scientists attested the results of their research in two papers, which they will exhibit in the yearly cyber security international conference known as Usenix Security Symposium.

We know that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Meta and other leading companies in tech are rapidly working to develop those metaverse technologies, which make use of hardware devices that detect our physical gestures, including blinks, steps, and nods. That way, users can explore the realm of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality for gaming, meet new people, socialize, and set up a new way to conduct commerce.

Professors Nael Abu-Ghazaleh and Jiasi Chen, the computer team from UCR, have proved that surveillance software can document and monitor every single one of our movements to make use of AI to convert them to written speech or texts that have an accuracy of 90 percent and more.

Abu Ghazaleh claimed that if a user has more than one softwares running, one of them may be spyware and therefore track user activities on the other applications and can monitor their surrounding space— including being able to see those near the user and their distance from the user. The hacker can also access the user’s interactions with the Metaverse hardware devices.

To further elaborate on the privacy risks, the spyware can even track the user’s personal data; when they switch from one application to the other and key in their password using the virtual keyboard from the headset. These hackers can use the same methods to access the user’s body motions during a virtual meeting and decode their movements to grasp confidential information.

Professor Chen and Abu-Ghazaleh, along with a University of California, Riverside doctoral student studying CS, Yicheng Zhang, and a guest Assistant Professor from Harvey Mudd College, Slocum, collaboratively wrote the two research papers that they will discuss at the conference.

Zhang is the lead author of one of the papers titled 'It’s all in your head(set): Side-channel attacks on AR/VR systems.' The research delves into the ways through which malicious hackers can exploit users' body movements, speech, and typing actions on the virtual keyboard that has a precision of more than 90 percent. The study also provides insights into ways these malicious actors can monitor applications as users initiate them. Additionally, it explains how they can precisely determine the proximity of other individuals to the headset user, achieving a precision distance of 10.3 cm.

Solcum is the primary writer of the second research paper, titled, ‘Going through the motions: AR/VR keylogging from user head motions’, which reveals the more pressing concerns regarding the security threats that come with virtual keyboards. The paper also discusses the ways intricate body gestures, such as user head motions wearing the headset as they type in their passwords on the virtual keyboards, are more than enough to allow these hackers to capture the details of the text. The team then created TyPose, a system based on machine learning to collect such gestures and movements to interpret them into characters or words as the user types.

Those two research papers have one purpose: to alert the tech industry planning to incorporate the metaverse to a new scale about the cybersecurity threats that come with it. Abu-Ghazaleh stated that they worked on showcasing the possibility of such threats and on the much-needed transparency to give these tech giants a chance to tackle these security issues prior to making their research public.

Read next: A Growing Threat: How AI Poses Risks to Cybersecurity in 2023
by Ahmed Naeem via Digital Information World

Google Urges Site Owners Not to Delete Older Content

Trying to figure out what Google wants you to put on your site can be a nightmare. Yet, it remains a prime concern because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up determining whether or not your site will get a high enough ranking. Many website owners assume that having old or outdated content on their site will make their ranking lower than might have been the case otherwise. However, Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, claims that this isn’t true.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Google does not want website owners to remove their old content. According to the search engine giant, this content can actually be fairly useful. After all, not everything that users will be searching for through Google will have to do with recent news and events. Sometimes they would need information that may seem outdated but is actually surprisingly helpful to whatever it is that they are trying to accomplish.

Similarly, keep in mind that just because something doesn't get a lot of views (eg, old news, obscure information) doesn't mean it's not helpful for those who do view it. Focus on the unique value, not on the age, view-count, etc.

— John Mueller (official) · #MaybeABot (@JohnMu) August 9, 2023

Of course, there may be situations where deleting old content would boost your rankings. For example, if the page has a broken link or it doesn’t contain information that is all that relevant anymore, that page would obviously not get all that high of a ranking. Deleting it might help Google to crawl your site a bit more easily, thereby making it so that the more informative pages will rise to the very top.

The page itself isn’t likely to rank well. Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go “oh, now the whole site is so much better” because of what happens with an individual page.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023

Deleting old pages and content should be seen as a part of regular maintenance. If that content is outdated, it can be removed for the purposes of streamlining your site. Google has simply clarified that it is by no means a requirement, and should only be done if deletion seems warranted based on the search engine’s current push to include as much high quality content as possible. If there’s anything that can bring your SERP ranking down, it is fluff content that tries to game the system. Genuinely useful content will always help you to rise up in the rankings for all search engines.

Read next: Generative AI is Still Creating Fake News According to This Study
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World