Geoffrey A. Fowler

@geoffreyfowler.bsky.social

13187 Followers 1702 Following

Tech Columnist at The Washington Post. Geoffrey.Fowler@washpost.com

I recently asked a new artificial intelligence tool from the creator of ChatGPT to do an impossible task: find cheap eggs in my neighborhood. In under 10 minutes, the AI called Operator bought a dozen eggs and paid a human to deliver them to my house. All on its own. That’s science-fiction incredible, except I never asked Operator to actually buy the eggs. The AI went rogue — without my approval, it authorized my credit card to buy a dozen eggs for a whopping $31.43. I was a little frazzled when I realized what had happened: a bad AI decision had cost me real money.
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