The emergence of ChatGPT | The Press

The emergence of chatbots like ChatGPT is causing a lot of excitement, but also some fear among our readers. Here is an overview of the emails received on our call to all this week.


A generation made up of functional uneducated people

As a former CEGEP and university professor, my main fear is that this tool of artificial intelligence (AI) will produce a generation of functional uneducated people. This generation to come in what, 10 or 15 years, could be tempted to say to itself: why learn all these (more or less) useful things? AI thus becomes its intellectual lifeline. Personal knowledge becoming an option that AI will allow these people to ignore while still being functional. Worrying.

Paul Mottet, Saint Sauveur

Let’s develop our critical sense

ChatGPT does not seem to me to be more dangerous than a search engine like Google. The only difference is that ChatGPT spells out the information found in conversational form, making those bits of information (or misinformation) more believable and accessible to everyone. A search engine, like ChatGPT, is able to fetch a lot of information, but is (still) unable to differentiate the true from the false: human beings are often unable to do so too. Blocking research on this subject is not the solution. It is rather necessary, as much as possible, to develop the critical sense of each one, and that, from the primary school.

Francois Bousquet, Mont-Saint-Hilaire

Back to paper exams

As a CEGEP teacher, this technology leads me to consider returning to the classroom exam with paper and pen, as well as in the shopping cart to accommodate students’ smart phones and bracelets and other electronic gadgets to control risks. of plagiarism. Also, as parents and teachers, this technology places us before the urgency of establishing educational programs to develop the digital literacy of children from elementary school. It presses.

Micheline Letourneau, Lorraine

Distrust will be king

This technology fascinates me and worries me at the same time. I trust the media, but how can I now trust everything I read or see on the internet or elsewhere? Distrust will be king. Everything risks becoming a fake. Let us regulate the phenomenon before its use. For humanity with confidence.

Gaëtan Daviau, Trois-Rivieres

Disadvantages outweigh benefits

Nothing good will ultimately come out of these artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The disadvantages will supplant the benefits, because we can count on humans to exploit the dark side of AI (misinformation, fraud, conspiracies…). Already, we are witnessing the excesses of social networks with all the difficulties that this entails. From now on, nothing will be certain. We will spend mad energy in wasting time and in verifications, because we will have to be wary of everything while wondering each time if it is true or false.

Mario Ares, Montreal

Technological anxiety

I am very afraid of this new technology, fear for the future of countries and populations. Already parallel universes are in place in almost all countries which divide peoples and cause violence and instability. To these parallel universes are added, without possible control, false and unverifiable events or information for ordinary mortals. That worries me a lot more than climate change, although that too is a big concern.

Jacynthe Dancause, Quebec

A paradigm shift

As we can see with the difficulties of consultation and action by countries to legislate in order to counter the many excesses of the web giants, we realize that the dazzling developments of artificial intelligence once again exceed the capacity of States to politically mark out and ethically this unavoidable technological and social paradigm shift, which will cause major upheavals in the world of work and in lifestyles. The already tenuous space between the real and the virtual, between truth and lies risks shrinking even more to drift towards an increasingly psychotic social universe. Hoping that the humans who manipulate the algorithms of the new thinking machines do not give up their emotional intelligence by behaving like robots without a conscience and without a soul.

Alain Dupuis

A risk on a human scale

Artificial intelligence will bring a second wind to medicine, science, but all spheres that affect relationships, the arts will be weakened. Is the risk worth it? The AI ​​has already warned us. Is humanity taking a big risk with this new form of intelligence? Yes, because some will probably use it for their benefit and it will therefore be difficult for ordinary mortals to tell the difference when faced with certain information that will be transmitted to us. Personally, it will not change anything for me in the near future.

Celine de Chevigny

We need to legislate

By integrating artificial intelligence with physical robots and adding other functions such as facial recognition (identification of people and their emotions), we obtain an entity capable of moving and making decisions. Will humans be able to compete with these robots? It is crucial to embed ethics and ensure that legislation across the world regulates the use of artificial intelligence. We cannot rely on companies to provide a good framework for these aspects.

Pierre Prud’homme


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