Fear of the AI
A brief comment on ChatGPT
Reading time: 4 min
Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash
ChatGPT
I don’t know if you’ve heard about the new, exciting tool issued by Open AI, ChatGPT, but, apparently, it reached one million users in five days. (This, by the way, was my worst attempt at sarcasm. Of course you have heard of it. Who hasn’t?)
As someone who would like, one day, to write for a living, it is quite frightening.
In the past few weeks, other than using it, trying its limitations and features, I’ve read tons of articles about it and they all boil down to one, specific point; it’s not smart enough.
As a content-creation tool, it’s outstanding. It can reply to emails, write scripts, give answers, and even adapt the tone to whatever you tell it to do, but it’s still very formulaic. In other words, it will produce anything you want with an astonishing level of specificity, but in a very boring way.
Happy days, right?
Wrong.
We all agree it can’t write a better novel than “Life of Pi,” and it can’t write a better song than “Hotel California,” but my point is, it can’t do it yet.
I believe that the question is not if AI will be better than humans at producing creative content, but merely when it will happen. And this is a problem, at least from my point of view.
Only another Tool
You see, I’m not afraid of implementing AI in my daily life. I would love to have an AI personal assistant while I work, or an AI powered Google Calendar able to pull up my appointments and notes like my best friend would do, I just don’t know where AI needs to stop to make me happy.
I don’t want to be the grumpy old man, bitter because he finds streaming confusing, remembering with nostalgia the VHS era. I want to be part of the future. I want to take advantage of the new opportunities technology will uncover. After all, wouldn’t Hemingway frown upon modern editing software? What would Monet say about graphic tablets? Innovation often breaks old habits, but in the long run is always for the better.
A Dangerous Path
Photo by Vishnu Prasad on Unsplash
Unless…
Think about this. Every single piece of technological innovation in human history had the sole purpose of simplifying life; free humans from labour in favour of more creative pursuits. Today a small business can run its accounts with 0 paper and 15 minutes a week, and a dyslexic person can write without a single concern about spelling. This is wonderful, of course, but AI adds a spin to it.
What if AI becomes better than humans at everything? And I mean everything. What if every book, every film, every poem, every song, screenplay, logo, business idea, actor, photo, legislation, design, project becomes AI generated just because it’s so much better than anything humans could do? What would we have left?
I’m not saying this is definitely what’s going to happen, but I can definitely picture a future where Amazon needs 0 people to run itself, launching as many books as its users every day.
A hint of Optimism
What’s the alternative?
Well, the way I see it, we have two.
First, the above materialises and it’s not as bad as I think. Maybe, “Human Artifacts” will just become an expanded version of what contemporary art is today; a world enjoyed by a few wealthy and loyal aficionados. I think this would be acceptable, in the short term, but I would hate living in a world where human development is replaced by AI development.
The more optimistic option I can imagine is a general approach very similar to the world of chess today.
It’s been years now that supercomputers have been better at chess than actual humans, and yet, chess has never been so popular.
Chess software are used to improve and analise, they don’t participate in tournaments, and nobody cares how good they are.
If I look back at history, I think this second outcome is the more likely and more desirable, but if the Big Filter theory is true, will AI be the sole cause of our extinction?
Let’s see what ChatGPT has to say about it.
“It is unlikely that AI will be the cause of human extinction. While AI has the potential to significantly impact society and the way we live, it is not capable of independently causing the extinction of the human race. AI is a tool that is created and controlled by humans, and it is up to us to use it responsibly and ethically. There are, however, potential risks associated with the development and deployment of AI, and it is important for researchers, policymakers, and the general public to carefully consider these risks and take steps to mitigate them.”
Alla prossima.
