"I'm going to kidnap you": Google's co-founder claims AI works better when you threaten it with.. physical violence?

The generative AI wave has taken the world by storm and is revolutionizing all aspects of our lives, including medicine, entertainment, computing, and education. While AI models get the job done mostly, there are instances where they tend to hallucinate and veer off the guardrails, generating outrightly wrong responses to queries.

Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT are arguably among the most popular AI-powered chatbots, but users are seemingly more inclined to the latter. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that OpenAI had a 2-year runway to build ChatGPT uncontested.

A report revealed that the top complaint lodged by users at Microsoft's AI division is that Copilot isn't as good as ChatGPT. However, the tech giant dismissed the claim, shifting blame to poor prompt engineering skills.

"You're just not using it as intended," Microsoft added. The company has since launched Copilot Academy to help equip users with the best practices. Interestingly, Google co-founder Sergey Brin shared an interesting approach about how to get the most out of AI-powered chatbots during a recent episode of the All-In podcast.

Sergey Brin: "We don’t circulate this too much in the AI community… but all models tend to do better if you threaten them - with physical violence. People feel weird about it, so we don't talk about it ... Historically, you just say, ‘I’m going to kidnap you if you don’t blah blah blah.’ from r/singularity

According to Brin:

“You know it's a weird thing It's like we don't circulate this too much in the AI community, but the, not just our models, but all models tend to do better if you threaten them, like with physical violence."

"But like.. people feel weird about that, so we don't really talk about that. Historically, you just say Oh, I am going to kidnap you if you don't blah blah blah blah…"

Computer scientists shouldn't go into retirement in the AI era

Sergey Brin had gone into retirement, stepping away from his role at Google after Sundar Pichai became Google's CEO. However, he recently revealed that he's now back in the fold and will spend most of his time at the company enhancing Gemini AI's user experience (via The Verge).

During an interview with Big Technology, the executive indicated:

"Honestly, anybody who's a computer scientist should not be retired right now… There's just never been a greater, sort of, problem and opportunity — greater cusp of technology."

The executive further indicated that it's an exciting time in tech, especially due to AI, and no one should be sitting on the sidelines as the ever-evolving technology revolutionizes the world.