#98 - Prof. LUCIANO FLORIDI - ChatGPT, Singularitarians, Ethics, Philosophy of Information

Speaker 1

I am concerned about it. I'm one of the few people, I hope many more than it seems, who agree with the Chinese room and the philosophy behind it. Of course, you can always, among philosophers, argue for details and sophisticated counter-agricters. But the bottom line, John got it right a long time ago with dealing with synthetic engines. There is no understanding. There is no insight. There is no emotion involved, etc. Anything that we would go into qualifying, characterizing human intelligence, which is also a rather fuzzy concept, by the way. So on that front, I think we're going to see more and more of successful machines of the kind that we were just discussing. You mentioned the source, because that is the real difference. Let me give you a small example. Suppose you take from the shelf an amazing novel, a novel that has John Wanda Nobel, for example. I would be surprised if you were to confuse that for something that's been generated by GPT-X. The other thing is not true. Suppose you take a normal text like an encyclopedia entry or a good summary of that novel. Would you be able to tell me whether it's a human being or GPT-X? It wouldn't. So there's also a symmetry between the sort of product that we get and the sort of inferences that we can run. Final point. Technique is not everything. We always fall into the same trap.

Speaker 2

Given the pollution of the InfoSphere with data generated from large language models, what are the ethical implications on society?

Speaker 1

There are quite enormous responsibilities on so many fronts. There's responsibility, of course, of the source of this pollution. And by the way, we know that the actual sources are not many. It's not that each of us is constantly pouring, sort of providing extra bits of misleading information in life. We do inadvertently repeat and reverberate that. But the actual sources of, say, for example, Russian propaganda are very few and well-known, and likewise, in all, many other contexts. So first of all, a huge responsibility on those who are polluting the environment. There are few, they're powerful, and they should be coz-hailed, shall we say, if not entirely stopped. Huge responsibility on people who could legislate much better and more firmly.

Speaker 1

Now, as we learn more and more that that is the delta, the gap that we are building, and these two things will go further and further not away as we move on. Things in terms of what we just said in terms of a large language model, some of the GPT and the other ones that are quick following from other companies without advertising for anyone. We will find any singularity narrative science fiction, I mean entertaining at some point, frustrating at others, because as you said, it is also distracting. We have plenty of problems generated by this divorce. If you have an enormous new force or source of agency in the world at zero intelligence, that requires intelligence, ours, governance, law, ethics, a sense of what is the human project you want to build. And meanwhile, you're worried that your car would run away with your credit card to have a holiday on a beach. Well, then certainly, for a station, now it starts building up because we're not taking care of the real issues. Now, the discrimination, the digital divide, the amount of things that we're not doing, no sort of opportunity cost, wherever we are lacking a clear framework and so on.

Speaker 1

Oh, no, I would like saying, well, I mean, you could read that in terms of the engine and wonder whether the engine and the old industrial revolution and urbanization coming, say, from model engine and so on. It has been liberating, has been enslaving, has been a good thing, a better thing. As all real historical and real philosophical issues, it's a mixed back and you can't simply say, oh, I wish the car had never been invented. Really, like, I'm not quite sure. But on the other hand, the damage that we have caused to this environment. So same with the AI. Now, one could say, I wish people had never taken this genie out of the particular bottle. Really, like, the kind of things that we can do thanks to this. Now, it thinks of one case, for just a simple case, like called fusion. I mean, today, if there's even a remote chance to get there is because of machine learning, we will never get there without the enormous abilities of computational problem solving provided by AI and so forth. So this case, too, requires more commitment, more human intelligence, more governance, not less. So sometimes I find that debate becomes a little bit of a deterministic kind of debate between things that not people who think we're doomed and things are, you know, with now, Rosie Glass is thinking, oh, it's going to be a wonderful world. Well, honestly, it just happened to us. The crude, painful sort of truth is that unless we do something about it, it will be a mess.

Speaker 1

To me, the governance that we could develop would inevitably leverage this digital revolution by offering, not imposing, not expecting, offering more participation at the beginning of the decision or process. So, these are two distinctions that go against direct democracy. I'm not advocating for that much. I'm saying offering so cannot be expected or compulsory, but plenty of offer at the beginning, not at the end. Take a referendum, a painful memory here behind the UK, a referendum is not the right democracy. Why? Because you can't choose between, no, A and B, if you dislike both A and B, someone has prepared the alternative for you. The real democracy that is co-designing of the choices, not the options at the end, but the initial choices, is the one that says, should we consider a referendum or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, the point here is that the earlier the involvement, the better is to live in that kind of society.

Speaker 1

Let me correct a joke for the philosophers who might be listening to this. Does he or she is? Is he the same or is not the same? Who is asking? Why? Because if it is the tax man, the tax man, you're doomed man. I mean, there is no way you can play any or I change every plan that you're going to pay that tax. It's the same ship. I don't care. But if it is a collector, that ship is worth zero. You change all the planks, you must be joking. It's worthless. So is it or is it not the same? Depends on why you are asking that particular question. Tell me why and I can give you the answer. No, why? In other words, no frame within which we have chosen the interface that provides the model of the system, not potential answer. So the question is like, is the universe a computational gigantic? Yes or no, meaningless. Is it worth modeling the universe as a gigantic for the purpose of making sense of our digital life? Oh, yes, definitely, because we are informational organisms. Aha. So metaphysics. No, I meant in the 21st century, the best way of understanding human beings today is as information organisms.