There was the invention of the computer and the deployment of the Internet. We have moved, with the recent implementation of algorithms such as Midjourney and ChatGPT, into the era that historians will call that of artificial intelligence (AI).
One of the misconceptions that still circulate in our time is that new technologies will first disrupt occupations requiring a low level of education. It was believed, in this sense, that the first to be replaced by machines would be warehousemen and factory workers. We have good reason to believe, today, that it is the professions requiring high-level university training that will be turned upside down and transformed forever.
Anyone who has interacted with these new AIs, which have become the talk-of-the-town, understood that we are dealing with a revolution whose most imaginative minds do not yet grasp all the areas where the shock wave will be felt. We are dealing with entities of a different nature because they do what we believed, until yesterday, to be proper to human beings.
We are dealing with beings who become creators, who evaluate, judge and synthesize information, who master natural language to the point of giving the impression of understanding, who can interact, argue intelligently and be teachers. Consequently, it is professions such as that of engineer, lawyer, artist, author and teacher that are now in the hot seat, faced with entities that produce and carry out acts that may compete with them.
It’s been a while now since the computational power of computers hasn’t impressed anyone. Beating the best chess player in the world had been the microprocessor feat of the previous century. Inventing, creating, understanding and expressing oneself as a human would, however, constituted capacities that were reserved for beings from works of science fiction. They are now the result of entities that we can come into contact with, with the arrival of the new year, on a daily basis.
While philosophers debate whether these new entities are sentient or not, whether they are conscious or whether they really have the ability to think, these artificial intelligences will irremediably insert themselves into a panoply of activities that shape people’s daily lives, assisting them in carrying out tasks of all kinds, interacting with them and investing more and more human spheres.
On the backs of these AIs, we ride a fiery beast that gallops on a thin line separating, on both sides, dystopia from utopia.
My nine year old son was recently asking ChatGPT what is after death. The AI replied that different beliefs existed on the subject, that some believe in the existence of a soul that endures after death while others believe, on the contrary, that there is nothing. It is a response that has the merit of countering the authoritarian dogmatism of theocratic regimes. It is a response from a philosopher who proposes hypotheses without taking a definitive position. This is the answer of an educator worthy of the name. Humanity may have just endowed itself with a personal pedagogue, one that everyone will always carry in their pocket, an assistant who will contribute to sharpening the critical spirit and to cultivating a thought which proceeds in a hypothetico-deductive way.
Let’s take a look at the possibilities of worrying drifts. We all know the extraordinary hold that screens now have in the lives of our fellow citizens. The arrival of social networks, in particular, has disembodied our relationships and virtualized our relationships. What about the AI generation, which could very well abandon the virtual relationships of social networks to make way for “relationships” with artificial intelligences? Some, in a few years, will perhaps be nostalgic for the time when we still interacted with virtual living beings.
As was the case with the dissemination of other technologies that have had the most significant impacts for the development of humanity, it is disturbing to note that no ethics committee was solicited before the commissioning of these artificial intelligences. We have embarked on this path which, apparently, corresponds to progress. Ethical questions, however, arise from all sides and are enough, by their diversity and depth, to make one dizzy.
For better or for worse, humans will have to learn to live with these new entities. Determining when it is desirable to subcontract one’s creativity, understanding and judgment to artificial intelligences is not an easy task. It is one, however, that will mark the year to come, as well as all those that will follow.