I was part of a small group that in 1994 persuaded our VP of R&D to put every researcher on Window 95 PCs linked by an ethernet network. Big bucks, global team, many challenges. I still remember what he said: “I only hope this doesn’t make the scientists spend less time thinking.”
It makes me squirm to think that the GPT text-generators are essentially a sophisticated plagiarism. Start with a billion text documents, build a statistical probability model, generate derivative (and often remarkably good) text.
One can legitimately ask, “Glenn, if you read a bunch of articles on a subject, then write an essay about it, aren’t you doing much the same thing?” In part.
The difference is that I gain more than information by reading articles and writing an essay. I strengthen my study power and intellect. I get to make links from what I read and examine to existing knowledge. I strengthen my self-discipline. I gain far less when I only use GPT tools to generate an essay.
My opportunity is to embrace GPT as a complementary tool rather than a substitution for thinking.
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I’ve shared a few ChatGPT threads with various people and some have commented about my use of the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in my prompts. “It’s not adding any value to the query,” one person wrote.
One observation from both history and contemporary life is that when we treat others in a master-slave relationship, we ourselves are damaged and demeaned. You can say “AI is just a tool,” which is correct — but we should still treat tools with respect, whether animate or inanimate. We’re made better when we treat others, including tools, with appropriate respect and courtesy.
I suspect this will become even more important as our algorithms and robotics become increasingly sophisticated.
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A tip for using ChatGPT – enter your prompt and ask for citations. It’s an interesting way to find resources to explore further. Cautionary note: check to verify the citations are genuine.
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It’s about the clicks and likes. The economic incentive model of keeping you engaged longer on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and many other websites means that algorithms are designed to show you more of what you liked and consumed before.
Couple this with the reality that we’re more drawn to entertaining “junk food” content than nourishing content, and it’s a downward spiral.
Multiple universities have made their best courses online, for free. The goofiest squirrel video will be viewed 100,000 times more frequently.
Nothing about GPT will transform these vectors. That’s up to individual bravery.
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“The first rule of economics is there isn’t enough to go around. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.” (Thomas Sowell)
One of the biggest lessons to absorb into your bones is that there are no solutions, so we must explore tradeoffs. Tradeoffs are never perfect because they don’t eliminate the tension between options. This is why I repeatedly ask the question “What problems do I prefer to have?”
Nothing about GPT and AI as we have it today changes this reality.
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An acquaintance wrote me, flatly stating “We shouldn’t use AI. It won’t help us in the end.” He went on to say he admires the concept of the mentats from Dune. (Mentats are highly-trained human computers capable of immense memory and calculations, fueled in part by the Sappho juice drug.) “This fuses human ethics with rational computing power.”
I reminded him that the novel describes “twisted” mentats like Piter DeVries who use their training for evil outside of any moral framework beyond Nietzsche’s power dynamic.
Our species is not well-equipped to walk away from a technology if it’s potentially useful. Despite treaties, we still have nerve gas and nuclear weapons in abundance. AI isn’t going to evaporate because a few people righteously choose to avoid using it.
The human factor is crucial with any tool. Nothing about GPT and AI as we have it today changes this reality.
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AI will produce multiple billion-dollar and a few trillion-dollar companies. The rewards will be skewed 80/20, or more likely 95/5. Most of the advantages of AI capabilities will accrue to the top 20%. Are you in that 20% or 5%?
Nothing about AI changes the reality that unequal distributions are universal.
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See if this resonates:
Imagine 1000 people each routinely using the power of tens of AI tools. They could have 100,000 or a million times the volume output as 1000 people not using AI tools. AI makes many things scale much faster. (Maybe not quality, certainly not true innovation.)
The net effect is that everyone in a domain that is heavily digitized is now competing with 10x or 100x more people.
I know a man who writes for multiple sites, each expecting a different style. (He uses multiple pseudonyms.) He told recently told me that he writes an article, then requests ChatGPT to rewrite it “in the style of” writers liked by the editors of these sites. In 15 minutes he can make 10 variants of the original article, and spend another 30 minutes tweaking them. Bang, done, ready to submit to a multiple editors. He got the idea from twitter bot farms that tweak the same message and create a hundred tweets.
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Plenty of people (correctly) believe that AI will transform our culture. It’s a major new category of tools, even if it can’t fix your plumbing problem.
The etymological root of the word culture is the word ‘cult.’ The singular characteristic of a cult is that someone tells you what to think and how to think, when to think, and when not to think. (Did your mind just leap to government spokespersons, social media, and TV/radio talking heads? Or some religious leaders?)
One lesson from studying the lives and patterns of highly influential people: They all inspired a culture around them. Some were healthy and helpful. Many were unhealthy and evil.
A cult is an unhealthy culture. A healthy culture promotes clear thinking, new ideas, and innovations, grounded in a moral framework.
We must have more healthy cultures in a world increasingly occupied by AI tools to offset the power of algorithm-driven cult of controlled thought. We need fathers and mothers who nurture and launch young adults who have the capacity to mature further. We need teachers who educate their students to go beyond their teachers. Indoctrination does not tolerate deviations from what it taught. We need entrepreneurs who create value far above the status quo. We need leaders who surround themselves with the right peers and mentors to keep them on a positive vector. We need men and women who model boldness, self-control, humility, strength, humor, wisdom, compassion, fearlessness.
