Re: ChatGPT > Spamassassin? :)

On 25/06/2024 16:21, Bill Cole wrote:
> On 2024-06-24 at 17:18:11 UTC-0400 (Mon, 24 Jun 2024 17:18:11 -0400)
> Mark London <[email protected]>
> is rumored to have said:
>
>> I received a spam email with the text below, that wasn't caught by 
>> Spamassasin (at least mine).   The text actually looks like something 
>> that was generated using ChatGPT.  In any event,  I put the text 
>> through ChatGPT, and asked if it looked like spam.  At the bottom of 
>> this email , is it's analysis.  I've not been fully reading this 
>> group.  Has there been any work to allow Spamassassin to use AI?
>
> "Artificial intelligence" does not exist. It is a misnomer.
>
> Large language models like ChatGPT have a provenance problem. There's 
> no way to know why exactly the model "says" anything. In a single 
> paragraph, ChatGPT is capable of making completely and directly 
> inconsistent assertions. The only way to explain that is that despite 
> appearances, a request to answer the ham/spasm question generates text 
> with no semantic connection to the original, but which seems like an 
> explanation.
>
> SpamAssassin's code and rules all come from ASF committers, and the 
> scores are determined by examining the scan results from contributors 
> and optimizing them to a threshold of 5.0. Every scan of a message 
> results in a list of hits against documented rules. The results can be 
> analyzed and understood.
>
> We know that ChatGPT and other LLMs that are publicly available have 
> been trained on data to which they had no license. There is no way to 
> remove any particular ingested data. There's no way to know where any 
> particular LLM will have problems and no way to fix those problems. 
> This all puts them outside of the boundaries we have as an ASF 
> project. However, we do have a plugin architecture, so it is possible 
> for 3rd parties to create a plugin for LLM integration.

I asked a well known chatbot: What would Bill Cole say if he was asked 
about integrating AI in to spamassassin?

> Bill Cole, the maintainer of SpamAssassin, is likely to be 
> enthusiastic about the potential of AI to improve spam detection.
>
> Here's what he might say:
>
> * Improved Spam Filtering: AI could be used to analyze spam emails 
> with greater accuracy than traditional rule-based methods. 
> SpamAssassin currently relies on matching email content to predefined 
> rules, but AI could identify spam based on subtler cues like phrasing, 
> sender behavior, and content structure.
>
> * Adapting to Evolving Threats: Spammers constantly develop new 
> tactics to bypass filters. AI can learn and adapt to these evolving 
> threats much faster than manually updating rules.
>
> * Mitigating False Positives: AI could help reduce the number of 
> legitimate emails mistakenly flagged as spam (false positives). This 
> is a major concern for SpamAssassin users.
>
> However, Bill Cole might also mention some challenges:
>
> * Training Data Bias: The effectiveness of AI depends on the quality 
> and balance of training data. Biases in the training data could lead 
> to the AI disproportionately flagging certain types of emails as spam.
> * Transparency and Explainability: It can be difficult to understand 
> how AI systems arrive at their decisions. This lack of transparency 
> could make it hard to debug errors or identify potential biases.
> * Computational Cost: Training and running AI models can require 
> significant computational resources, which might not be feasible for 
> all SpamAssassin users.
>
> Overall, Bill Cole would likely be cautiously optimistic about the 
> potential of AI to improve SpamAssassin. He would acknowledge the 
> potential benefits but also highlight the challenges that need to be 
> addressed.
>
:)