Do you know what I admire most about human beings? It’s their ability to admit their ignorance. The fact that they can say: I don’t know.
The strength of our species lies in the questions it has always asked itself. And the most beautiful, the most precious questions are those it cannot answer. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why life and death, love and hate? And why is there this strange thing called the self, which, despite its insignificance, insists on saying “I”?
Although humanity has made many advances and discoveries on these fundamental issues, it is no more advanced in the Internet age than it was in the days of hunter-gatherers.
As the Earth has been orbiting the Sun for over 4 billion years, humanity has always gravitated around the few problems that occupy it, without ever moving forward or backward.
What have we learned about death since the distant time of Sophocles? And what more do we know about love that Shakespeare and Louise Labé did not already know? This strange permanence should not worry us, but reassure us: in the face of mystery, all humans are equal. The only thing that distinguishes some of them is their capacity to marvel at what they do not understand.
When asked by a radio host if he believed in the existence of something after death, essayist Pierre Vadeboncœur remained silent for several seconds before replying, with a wry smile: “I don’t know, but I’m curious.”1. » There is no more beautiful answer.
This is probably why artificial intelligence will always be inferior to human intelligence, even if it holds all the knowledge in the world. It will not be able to choose silence, will never be able to say: I don’t know. It will discourse endlessly, on any subject, pretending to know everything, because that’s the only thing it can do. Teachers know what I’m talking about: many students ask ChatGPT to write papers for them, without realizing that the machine produces a speech in which it is not possible to distinguish the truth from the lie.
The problem with artificial intelligence (AI) is that it only offers appearances of the truth, even if it means inventing sources and quotes, imagining facts. In short, she excels in the art of saying just about anything. This is also the conclusion reached by researchers in ethics and technology in an article that has just been published and whose title is unequivocal: “ChatGPT is bullshit2 “.
Since AI is incapable of perceiving reality, these researchers note, it simply pretends to know what it is talking about, without being able to judge the value of the result. The danger, of course, is that it can spread falsehoods, but even more so because it is indifferent to the truth: when AI lies, she doesn’t even know she’s lying – hence the choice of the word bullshit to describe his logorrhea.
The coincidence is striking: while we see the emergence of machines capable of producing bullshit at will, we witness the return of the bullshiter in chief (forgive me this ugly neologism), who is preparing to return to the head of the American empire: Donald Trump.
Here is someone who is clearly incapable of keeping quiet or admitting his shortcomings, someone who claims to have all the answers, someone, above all, who has produced such a quantity of lies that one wonders if he has not become indifferent to the truth. Does Trump know he is lying when he lies?
The man may be excessive and out of the ordinary, but he is also a symptom of an era – ours – where everyone is invited to express “their” truth and to impose it on others, willingly or by force, at the risk of saying anything.
Over the past 20 years, the emergence of continuous news channels and social networks has marked the entry into what could be called the Age of Opinion, which can be summed up in this motto: “I react, therefore I am.”
In this new era, the slightest event, the slightest problem seems to require a response within a minute – what am I saying, within a second! –, as conversational robots would do. In the media sphere, we are witnessing the emergence of an ever-increasing number of specialists in opinion delivered on the spot. These omni-commentators are never short of words: they speak out on every possible subject, generating discourse at will, broadcast on every imaginable platform. They are so effective that one could believe that their texts write (or speak) themselves, as if thought worked like software.
Is there a limit to the number of opinions an individual can express in a single day? I sometimes find myself dreaming of the day when one of them, after observing a moment of silence, will dare to admit that he has no informed opinion on the question he has been asked, that he would need some perspective and time to think.
I know that people are paid to provide answers – including those who, like me, work as teachers. But it seems to me that we would gain a lot if we agreed to let our thoughts breathe from time to time, if we agreed to reconnect with the mystery, to be silent in order to listen better. Because “if true silence comes at the end of words,” as the poet François Cheng wrote, the right words are born only within silence.3 “.
1. It is the filmmaker Bernard Émond who reports this anecdote.
Read the 2017 interview with Bernard Émond
2. Read the article “ChatGPT is bullshit”
3. François Cheng, The real glory is hereGallimard/NRF, 2015.
What do you think? Join the dialogue