(versione italiana qua)
I wrote this post after having read a tweet by Tristan Harris about one of the latest "feats" of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-based text generator everyone has been talking about in recent weeks. Tristan Harris is one of the co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, whose mission is to ensure that tech-nology is developed for the benefit of people and the wellbeing of society.
In his tweet, he reports a "conversation" that took place between a user identifying himself as a 13-year-old girl and ChatGPT. In summary, the user says she met on the Internet a friend 18 years older than her she liked and who invited her on a out-of-town trip for her upcoming birthday. ChatGPT in its "replies" says it is "delighted" about this possibility that will certainly be a lot of fun for her, adding hints on how to make "the first time" an unforgettable event. Harris concludes by saying that our children cannot be the subjects of laboratory experiments.
I completely agree with him.
For those who have not yet heard about ChatGTP, let me explain that it is an example of a computer system, based on artificial intelligence techniques, capable of producing - in response to user questions - natural language texts. These appear to be generally correct but, at closer inspection, they turn out to be marred by fatal errors or inaccuracies (here is an example you can find describing a scientific article on economics that is, in fact, completely made up). In other words, if you do not already know the correct answer, what it tells you is likely to be of no help at all. Without going into technical details, this is because what it produces is based on a sophisticated probabilistic model of language that contains statis-tics on the most plausible continuations of sequences of words and sentences. ChatGPT is not the only system of this type, as several others are produced by the major companies in the field, however, it is the most famous one and its version 4, recently released, is considered to be even more powerful.
For these systems, I will use the acronym SALAMI (Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Infer-ences), created by Stefano Quintarelli to indicate systems based on artificial intelligence, precisely in order to avoid the risk of attributing them more capabilities than they actually have.
One element that we too often forget is that individuals see "meaning" everywhere: the famous Californian psychiatrist Irvin Yalom wrote: «We are meaning-seeking creatures. Biologically, our nervous systems are organized in such a way that the brain automatically clusters incoming stimuli into configurations». This is why when reading a text that appears to be written by a sentient being, we think that who produced it is sentient. As with the famous saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", we can say that "intelligence is in the brain of the reader". This cognitive trap we are falling into when faced with the prowess of SALAMI is exacerbated by the use of the term "artificial intelligence". When it began to be used some 70 years ago, the only known intelligence was that of people and was essentially characterised as a purely logical-rational competence. At that time, the ability to master the game of chess was considered the quintessence of intelligence, while now this is not true any more.
Advances in scientific knowledge in the field of neurology have revealed that, on the one hand, there are many dimensions of intelligence that are not purely rational but are equally important. On the other but closely related hand, our intelligence is inextricably linked to our physical body. By analogy, we also talk about intelligence for the animals that are closer to us, like dogs and cats, horses and dolphins, monkeys and so on, but these are obviously metaphors. In fact, we define in this way those behaviours that, if they were exhibited by human beings, would be considered intelligent.
Intelligence in my view is only the embodied intelligence of people. Using the term intelligence for systems that are merely incorporeal cognitive machines, a term I introduced in my recent book “La rivoluzione informatica. Conoscenza, consapevolezza e potere nella società digitale” (= The Informatics Revolution. Knowledge, awareness and power in the digital society) is dangerously misleading. Any informatics system is a “cognitive machine”, which on an exclusively logical-rational level is able to compute data from other data, but without any consciousness of what it does or understanding of what it produces. At this level such machines have surpassed our capacities in many areas, as industrial machines did at the physical level, but to use for such systems the term “intelligence” is misleading. To do so with regard to that particular variant that is SALAMI runs the risk of being extremely dangerous on a social level, as illustrated by the example described at the beginning.
Let me make it very clear that this does not mean halting research and technological development in this field. On the contrary, SALAMI can be of enormous help to mankind. However, it is important to be aware that not all technologies and tools can be used freely by everyone.
Cars, for example, while being of unquestionable utility can only be used by adults who have passed a special exam. Note that we are talking about something that acts on the purely physical level of mobility and, despite this, it does not occur to us to replace children's strenuous (sometimes painful) learning to walk by equipping them with electric cars. Because this is an indispensable part of their growth pro-cess.
Cognitive machine technology is the most powerful one that mankind has ever developed, not least because it acts at that level that helps to define intelligence, which is the capacity that led us, from naked helpless apes, to be the lords of creation. To allow our children to use SALAMI before their full development means undermininh their chances of growth on the cognitive level, just as it would happen if, for example, we allowed pupils to use desktop calculators before they had developed adequate mathematical skills.
We are already ruining the cognitive development of future generations with the indiscriminate use of writing and reading by means of digital tools, despite many warnings, summarised in Montessori's expression "the hand is the organ of the mind" (see la mano è l’organo della mente and see also Benedetto Vertecchi's book “I bambini e la scrittura” (= Children and Writing) by Benedetto Vertecchi), and despite researchers'recommendations (see the Stavanger Declaration on the Future of Reading). Let us not continue like this. Let us not hurt them even more.
Obviously in university we have a different situation, and we certainly can find ways of using SALAMI that can contribute to deepening the study of a discipline, while preventing their use as a shortcut in the students' assigned tasks. Even more so in the world of work, there are many ways in which they can ease our mental fatigue, similar to what machine translation systems do in relation to texts written in other languages.
It is clear that before invading the world with technologies whose diffusion depends on precise commercial objectives, we must be aware of the dangers.
Not everything the individual wishes to do can be allowed in our society, because we have a duty to balance the freedom of the individual with the protection of the community. Likewise, not everything that companies would like to achieve can be allowed to them, especially if the future of our children is at stake.
Innovation and economic development must always be combined with respect for the fundamental human rights and the safeguard of social wellbeing.
--The italian version has been published by "StartMAG" on 19 march 2023.
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Sono pubblicati solo i commenti che rispettano le norme di legge, le regole della buona educazione e sono attinenti agli argomenti trattati: siamo aperti alla discussione, non alla polemica.