After the appearance of ChatGPT and its competitors, panic ensues. Some predict mass unemployment, the bankruptcy of education, the dominance of fake news, the collapse of democracy, and the end of human history. I think these augurs have seen too many movies. If calls for a moratorium are heeded, it would be the first time in history that a new technological invention has been suspended or cancelled.
Fear is always of the unknown and is cured with more information. When one climbs to the top of a mountain and approaches the edge of the cliff, one's legs shake. But if he takes one more step forward and sees that there is a landing a meter below where he can put his foot, he stops shaking. The more information, the less fear.
Keep in mind that the power of artificial intelligence (AI) is enormous, but limited. Chatbots access large amounts of data accumulated on the internet by Wikipedia, some newspapers, patent sites and other online publications and select the most likely results. It's like a Google or Bing search engine, but multiplied. The basic operation is the same as that of mobile phones when we are writing a text and they suggest the next word of the message. But the most probable, that is, the most common, is usually also the most trivial, superficial and doubtful. In the language of the chatbot, clichés, set phrases and bureaucratic language abound. He also has no sense of humor.
My modest experience includes posing to ChatGPT the questions and exercises from my Science of Politics textbook. The answers tend to be correct when it comes to, for example, applying data to a mathematical formula. But when the student is asked to investigate an election or analyze a document, the chat response is something like: “Sorry, I don't have access to current events or real-time data”, “Sorry, this term may refers to a specific field or a context that is not in my field of knowledge”.
Chatbots know what is on the internet, that is, they know a lot of what is known, but they do not know what is not known nor can they guess it. They give probable answers, but they don't understand, they don't think, and they can't discover anything that hasn't already been discovered. They reproduce descriptions of how things are, but they do not give causal explanations of why they are so. They are the denial of creativity. Also, they have been restricted from contributing to anything new that might be controversial.
Artificial intelligence is also incapable of reasoning from moral principles. A chatbot lacks emotions or feelings, it is unconscious, incapable of forming opinions or beliefs. It is, therefore, useless for making decisions that imply value options or establishing norms of behavior. When faced with intriguing questions, he is ambivalent: “On the one hand, this; on the other hand, the other”, “some say this, but others say something else”…
The biggest question that has caused so much panic is whether artificial intelligence can learn on its own and successfully compete with natural human intelligence. But the AI learns statistical patterns from the available data, including errors and misrepresentations. For now, hallucinations abound, as their absurd and nonsensical responses are called. You will only be able to improve if you receive feedback through evaluations of your results, corrections and suggestions. In such a case, humans will maintain direction.
Handled well by humans, AI can generate immense benefits. Allow me a little anecdote. Two weeks ago I participated in an international colloquium at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. During my presentation, there were 400 people in the room and, I was told, 2,600 connected online from ten other universities in the country.
Through a small black and white square called a QR code, 56 questions arrived that, in half a minute, an AI device condensed into four thematic blocks, making them viable to answer.
As soon as this type of practice becomes widespread, assistants, secretaries, accountants, translators, a lot of mechanical, repetitive and servile work will gradually disappear. They will follow the path of the bus collectors and the subway ticket clerks, the gas stations, the typists with carbon paper, the travel agencies, the road maps or the queues at the bank windows to get four duros. Welcome the time and energy gained for complexity, inventiveness, discovery and creativity.
The increase in well-being that AI can enable is enormous. It is estimated that labor productivity in some sectors is already multiplying. There are already tremendous advances in medicine, both for diagnosis and for new drugs; there will be soon to deal with the climate crisis, the scarcity of natural resources and food. We will learn to discriminate against false news, just as we learned to distrust advertising and electoral campaigns. And while some traditional exams may become obsolete, nothing can replace the personal exchange with students in the classroom.
John Keynes predicted that his grandchildren would work only 15 hours a week; It was a correct calculation to live as in his time, but we have continued working many hours to live much better. When the computers came out, some asked: "Do you work less now?". The answer was: no, I work the same hours, but the result is superior. The same will happen with artificial intelligence.
