We don’t let our children become guinea pigs for ChatGPT&Co.
Let's not get us wrong, artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT can be of enormous help to humanity but innovation and economic development must always be combined with respect for fundamental human rights and the safeguarding of social well-being. The analysis of Professor Enrico Nardelli of the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", president of "Informatics Europe" and director of the National Laboratory "Informatics and School" of CINI
I'm inspired by a tweet by Tristan Harris about one of the latest "feats" of ChatGPT, a text generator based on artificial intelligence that everyone is talking about in recent weeks. Tristan Harris is one of the co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology , which has a mission to ensure that technology is developed for the benefit of people and social well-being.
In his tweet, he reports a "conversation" that took place between a user who identifies himself as a 13-year-old girl and ChatGPT. In summary, the user says that he has met a friend 18 years older than her on the net who seems nice to him and who has invited her on a trip out of town precisely for the days in which her birthday will be. ChatGPT in its "answers" "rejoices" for this possibility that will surely be a lot of fun for her, adding indications on how to make an unforgettable event "the first time". Harris concludes by saying that our children cannot be subjected to laboratory experiments.
I completely agree with him.
For those who have not yet heard of ChatGTP, I explain that it is an example of a computer system, based on artificial intelligence techniques, capable of producing – in response to user questions – texts in natural language which generally appear correct but which, upon closer examination, turn out to be flawed by fatal errors or inaccuracies ( here an example in which he describes a scientific article on economics that is instead completely invented). In other words, if you don't already know the correct answer, what the system tells you is likely to be of no help. Without going into technical details, this is because what it produces is based on a sophisticated probabilistic model of language that contains statistics on the most plausible continuations of word and sentence sequences. ChatGPT is not the only system of this type, considering that several others are produced by the main companies in the sector, but this is the most famous one and that in these days is being made available in version 4, which is said to be even more powerful .
For these systems I will use the acronym SALAMI (Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences = systematic approaches for [the development of] learning algorithms and [systems of] automatic deduction), created by Stefano Quintarelli to indicate systems based on intelligence artificial, precisely in order to avoid the risk of attributing to them more than there is.
In fact, one element that we too often forget is that man sees meaning everywhere: the famous Californian psychiatrist Irvin Yalom wrote: «We are creatures who seek meaning everywhere. From a biological point of view, our nervous system is organized in such a way that the brain automatically groups the stimuli it receives into configurations». This is why when we read a text that appears to be written by a sentient being, we assume that whoever produced it is sentient. As for 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 into which we are falling in the face of SALAMI's exploits is aggravated by the use of the term "artificial intelligence". When it was first used about 70 years ago, the only intelligence known was that of people and was essentially characterized as a purely logical-rational ability. At that time, the ability to dominate the game of chess was considered the quintessence of intelligence, not anymore. Decades of advancement of scientific knowledge in the neurological field have highlighted that, on the one hand, there are many dimensions of intelligence that are not purely rational but are equally important and, on the other hand but closely connected, our intelligence is linked in a indissoluble to our physical body. By analogy, we also speak of intelligence for the animals that are closest to us, dogs and cats, horses and dolphins, monkeys and so on, but these are obviously metaphors. In this way we define those behaviors which, if they were performed by human beings, would be considered intelligent.
Intelligence in my view is just the embodied intelligence of people. To use the term intelligence for systems that are just disembodied cognitive machines, a term I introduced in my recent book The Information Revolution. Knowledge, awareness and power in the digital society” is dangerously misleading. All computer systems are "cognitive machines", which on an exclusively logical-rational level are able to calculate data from other data, but without any awareness of what they are doing or understanding of what they produce. On this plane such machines have surpassed our capabilities in many domains, as on the physical plane industrial machines have, but to speak for such systems of intelligence is deceptive. Doing so with regard to that particular variant which is SALAMI risks being extremely harmful on a social level, as illustrated by the example described at the beginning.
Let me clarify right away that this does not mean that research and technological development should not continue along this path. Far from it, SALAMIS can be of enormous help to humanity. But it is important to be aware that not all technologies and tools can be used freely by everyone.
The car, for example, despite being of indisputable 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 the tiring (sometimes painful) learning to walk by children by equipping them with electric cars. Because it is an indispensable part of their growth process.
The technology of cognitive machines is the most powerful that humanity has ever developed, also because it acts on that level which helps to define intelligence, i.e. the ability that has led us, from naked and defenseless apes, to be masters of creation . Allowing our children to use SALAMI before they are fully developed means reducing their chances of cognitive growth, such as making them use desktop calculators before pupils have developed adequate mathematical skills.
We are already ruining the cognitive development of future generations with the indiscriminate use of digital writing and reading, despite many warnings, summarized in Montessori's expression " the hand is the organ of the mind " (see also the book "Children and writing" by Benedetto Vertecchi), and despite the appeals of researchers (see the Stavanger Declaration on the future of reading). Let's not continue like this. Let's not hurt them any more.
Obviously at the university there is a different situation and it is possible to identify ways of using SALAMIS which can contribute to deepening the study of a discipline, preventing their use as shortcuts in carrying out the tasks assigned to the students. All the more so in the world of work there are many ways in which they can alleviate our mental fatigue, similarly to what machine translation systems do for texts written in other languages.
It is clear that even before invading the world with technologies whose drive to spread responds to precise commercial objectives, the dangers must be taken into account.
Not everything that the individual wishes to do can be made explicit within a society, because we have a duty to reconcile the freedom of the individual with the protection of the community. Similarly, 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 fundamental human rights and the safeguarding of social welfare.
(Interested readers will be able to dialogue with the author, starting from the third day after publication, on this interdisciplinary blog )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/non-lasciamo-che-i-nostri-figli-diventino-cavie-di-chatgptco/ on Sun, 19 Mar 2023 06:34:04 +0000.