[OPINION, ANALYSIS and FUN.]
NOTES
Aside from perhaps the war in Ukraine and the classified document issues facing Trump, Biden and Pence etc., the biggest thing in the news is probably the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT which is now being made widely available to the general public. ChatGPT is, of course, can do things that are simply amazing. It is able to write articles for writers, advertisements for retailers, answer questions for everyday users, write computer code for anybody (even the untrained) and a variety of other things that people have spent years and tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars learning how to do.
However, it is important to consider the following quote from an article titled “ChatGPT is a Tipping Point for AI” by Ethan Millick, found in the Harvard Business Review, Dec 14, 2022.
“The problems of AI remain very real, however. For one, it is a consummate bullshitter, and I mean that in a technical sense. Bullshit is convincing-sounding nonsense, devoid of truth, and AI is very good at creating it. You can ask it to describe how we know dinosaurs had a civilization, and it will happily make up a whole set of facts explaining, quite convincingly, exactly that. It is no replacement for Google. It literally does not know what it doesn’t know, because it is, in fact, not an entity at all, but rather a complex algorithm generating meaningful sentences.”
What is not mentioned above is that ChatGPT can also write articles and other content that sound like it comes from another particular person or source. And sometimes those sources are trustworthy, and sometimes untrustworthy. As if we don’t have enough of a problem with usually false conspiracy theories, fake news and/or allegations of fake news.
ChatGPT’s fans might say that it will democratize things giving even the common man untold ability to do many things not previously possible. This is true to a very large extent. However, this amazing technology is also going to cause an unbelievable amount of economic disruption and job displacement. Business and employment is likely to be revolutionized in very short order.
But one big question is: how many jobs are going to be displaced? How will this affect the economy during what will be a significant transition period whose duration no one can predict. What will it do to the federal budget if a lot of unemployment claims have to be paid? Will the number of foreclosures and evictions go up? Will it precipitate a national mental health crises? What will it do to international trade and international relations? And of course, a huge question is, how is all of this going to affect the balance of military power in the world?
Frankly, our opinion, is that, while ChatGPT (and artificial intelligence in general) will open up wonderful possibilities, one shouldn’t believe all the gurus out there who want you to believe that this is a wonderful thing without any drawbacks. There are existential dangers lurking. And much pain will be suffered by many people. The AI and ChatGPT developers cannot possibly know what the unintended adverse short and long term consequences of this are and to the extent that they pretend to know (and/or try to make us believe that that they do know) they are being deceitful and/or naive on a scale that is beyond comprehension.
It’s very true that change is inevitable and that in the scheme of things every nation, every company and every person must adapt to change and remain technologically competent if not on the cutting edge thereof. And everyone wants life to improve, but where have our political leaders been on all of this? The President and Congress, (as well as World Leaders generally) should have been (and should be) more out in front of this issue than they have been. Instead of worrying about power for power’s sake (as most always do these days) they should be focused on saving their respective constituents (and their countries) from the possible adverse affects of the introduction of AI technology. Improperly used, by actors with authoritarian intentions, AI will be used to gut our civil liberties and our democracy. This must be avoided and our leaders need to adopt measures to assure that this will not happen. For example, shouldn’t the “roll out” of this have been slower and more incremental? Why is this being made available to our adversaries too? Do we need a new governmental agency to oversee this? One can only imagine what the response of the government would have been if Robert Oppenheimer, Einstein or some other scientist had published detailed plans for building a workable atomic bomb in all the major newspapers of the world, including those in Germany, Japan, and the U.S.S.R back in August of 1939—just prior to the start of World War II. Isn’t the release of ChatGPT on the internet and making it publicly available to everyone almost the same thing?
The American way has always been to encourage its citizens to be better competitors. Americans have always been told: The marketplace is wonderful and left to its own devices it will always give us a better mousetrap. I questioned a few important aspects of that assumption in my novel Rao’s Solution. Reasonandbalance.com is dedicated to a more practical, logical and balanced approach to all things. The opinion here is that we are at a tipping point in man’s evolution where, we humans need to focus more on worldwide cooperative approaches (not competitive ones) to help answer and solve the increasing number of issues that affect the survival of man on this planet. And AI is certainly one of them.
TUNES
Phewww!
The above makes one realize the need to….
Thanks ‘Retha !
BTW: Since this is likely to be an issue from now on: I certify that absolutely none of the original (non-quoted) content above was written by ChatGPT or AI ! [Come to think of it, shouldn’t there be a law requiring anyone using ChatGPT to create written articles or other content of any type to disclose that fact to readers and users? ]
David Dixon Lentz January 26, 2023
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