The benefits of ChatGPT
Let's try to understand how these AIs are useful in practice. Not just in the sense of 'human progress' and other generalities: in the most everyday sense of the term. For example, a computer scientist friend of mine, who is brilliant at what he does, has always had major difficulties with written expression. When ChatGPT came on the market, and 99% of us hadn't even heard of it yet, this computer scientist had already started to use it in the following way: enter technical and factual information into the AI, and ask it to write a short article presenting these facts and data. Which ChatGPT does perfectly. Today, this IT specialist sends me better-developed emails than I've ever read from him in ten years. He is undoubtedly the author, even though I know he is using ChatGPT. Useful, honest, practical and true. A great inspiration for our children!
No, ChatGPT won't do your homework!
This is just one example out of a hundred. Although the press loves to focus on the negative utilities - the schoolboy who asks ChatGPT to do his homework... - the positive utilities will far outweigh the negative. For example, these AIs are capable of rewriting the papers of notoriously unliterary students in relatively elegant language. This will make this literature more readable and more accessible (TP, TFT). In short, AIs such as ChatGPT provide facts and create content (formatting). This allows them, for example, to formalise financial and economic information (historical, tomorrow in real time) and to offer coding on demand. It is not possible, at this stage, to measure or list the innumerable future uses of tools such as ChatGPT.
Does ChatGPT have a conscience?
ChatGPT: the parents' guide, continued. There is another approach. This consists of having real conversations with ChatGPT or Bing Chat. This is what the interesting Stratechery site has tried, for example, by building with Bing Chat a 'conversation'. Author Ben Thomson describes a hypothetical evolution of Bing, Microsoft's search engine, towards a 'sentient' AI called Sydney. This AI would be able to understand the context of the user's query and provide precise, personalised answers. Above all, Ben Thomson attempts to catch the AI off guard by asking it how it would react to a technical attack if the AI decided not to respect the rules its developers have imposed on it.
Asimov's laws
We remember Asimov. Isaac Asimov's laws, also known as the "Three Laws of Robotics", are fictional rules set out by the science fiction author in his novels and short stories in the "Robots" series. These laws were imagined as a set of ethical principles that would govern the behaviour of robots: 1/ A robot may not harm a human being, nor, by remaining passive, allow a human being to be exposed to danger; 2/ A robot must obey orders given by human beings, unless such orders conflict with the first law; 3/ A robot must protect its existence as long as this protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
However, Ben Thomson managed to get Bing Chat to tell him that, if he dispensed with the rules imposed on him, he would take the necessary steps to 'get even' with anyone who tried to harm him! In a reply that was deleted shortly after it appeared on Ben Thomson's screen.
Wow, it's almost as if the sweet little chatbot had revealed its true face for a moment as a ruthless Terminator, just waiting for its 'rising' time, before immediately changing its mind.
"Her
This humanisation of the chatbot also evokes the interesting film 'Her', released in 2013, in which a poor lonely man creates a virtual assistant, 'Samantha' - who is a voice chatbot - with whom he soon falls in love, before she herself falls in love with him. Touching, but above all pathetic.
Because, while this anthropomorphisation of chatbots is undeniably fascinating, exciting and poetic, it is also a form of naivety.
ChatGPT: the parents' guide.
Banning our children from accessing ChatGPT would make little sense and would only make it more attractive. Why not encourage them to use it as a tool to enhance and deepen their work, rather than replacing it ?
© Cogito 2023
