Author: Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney

Social media has recently been flooded with images that looked like they belonged in a Studio Ghibli film. Selfies, family photos and even memes have been re-imagined with the soft pastel palette characteristic of the Japanese animation company founded by Hayao Miyazaki. This followed OpenAI’s latest update to ChatGPT. The update significantly improved ChatGPT’s image generation capabilities, allowing users to create convincing Ghibli-style images in mere seconds. It has been enormously popular – so much so, in fact, that the system crashed due to user demand. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT are best understood as “style engines”.…

What if we told you that artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT don’t actually learn? Many people we talk to are genuinely surprised to hear this. Even AI systems themselves will often tell you confidently that they are learning systems. Many reports and even academic papers say the same. But this is due to a misconception – or rather a loose understanding of what we mean by “learning” in AI. Yet, understanding more precisely how and when AI systems learn (and when they don’t) will make you a more productive and more responsible user of AI. AI does not…