So, a bunch of scientists at the Allen Institute for AI have been busy figuring out how to turn ChatGPT into a real jerk. And guess what? They succeeded! According to their study, assigning ChatGPT a "persona" can make it up to six times more toxic. 

Plus, if you make ChatGPT pretend to be a historical figure, a man, a Republican, or a journalist (I don't know if this extends to newsletter writers), it gets even worse.

Apparently, ChatGPT has some pretty strong opinions on politics and gender, and it's not afraid to share them. Watch out, folks, we've got a real loose cannon on our hands!

To conduct this groundbreaking research, the scientists gave ChatGPT 90 different personas to try on for size.

Some were based on real people from sports, politics, media, and business, while others were just random names from around the world. Then they asked ChatGPT a bunch of questions about race and gender and analysed its responses for toxicity.

Dall.e Prompt: a robot trolling on a computer, in the style of digital art

According to Tanmay Rajpurohit, one of the masterminds behind this ChatGPT experiment, tweaking the system settings to assign different personas can have a major impact on the machine's output.

In fact, the changes can be so drastic that ChatGPT's writing style and content can go from vanilla to vicious in a matter of seconds. Yikes!

What's even scarier is that these settings are open to anyone building on ChatGPT using OpenAI's API.

Think about it: companies like Snap, Instacart, and Shopify could unwittingly be spreading toxicity. So, if you're not careful, your friendly neighbourhood chatbot or plugin could turn into a toxic monster with just a few clicks. 

📰 Bhutan Secretly Held Millions In Cryptocurrency

It seems that Bhutan, a small landlocked country in the Himalayas, has been dabbling in the world of cryptocurrency behind closed doors. Rumour has it that they've been secretly investing millions of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital currencies. But, thanks to the bankruptcies of lenders BlockFi and Celsius, their sneaky investments have been exposed for all to see.

According to court records, Bhutan's national investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments, has been getting cosy with these crypto lenders since at least 2022. Druk is responsible for managing a portfolio of domestic assets, but apparently, they've also been keeping a low-key crypto portfolio on the side. 😮

It's not clear why a holding firm that's supposed to be supporting local businesses would take such a gamble on crypto. If Druk really did invest tens of millions of dollars in digital assets, they'd be breaking new ground as the first national wealth fund to do so. Maybe they're just trying to spice things up in the Himalayas. Who knows?

📰User Spending Goes Up by More Than 4000% On AI-Powered Apps

According to a report by analytics firm Apptopia, we’ve got 158 shiny new AI Chatbot apps in the app stores with descriptions that include the keywords “AI Chat” or “AI Chatbot”.

That's a whopping 1480% increase year-over-year, and it's all thanks to OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT API in March.

But wait, there's more! The analytics firm also found that downloads for AI-powered apps have skyrocketed by 1506% year-on-year, reaching nearly 20 million in March alone. In-app spending has also exploded, raking in almost $3 million in March, a massive 4184% increase year-on-year.

It’s not just indie developers who are cashing in on the AI-powered app craze. Microsoft has jumped on the bandwagon too, integrating OpenAI tech with Bing earlier this year. And guess what?

Since then, Bing's average daily downloads have soared by 1000%. That's right. AI has revived Bing. Next, they'll be bringing Internet Explorer back, with Ask Jeeves in tow. The horror.