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World-renowned intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky issues scathing indictment of ChatGPT

Noam Chomsky is less than impressed by the popular AI tech tool
ChatGPT.

Published Mar 13, 2023

Source: https://t.co/TNCi1foDfm

World-renowned intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky has issued a
scathing indictment of ChatGPT, which has been all the rage over the
past few months, both inside and outside the technology sector.

The much-talked-about ChatGPT is an OpenAI language chatbot that can
compose essays, write code, and perform other things based on user
enquiries.

However, leftist intellectual juggernaut and linguist Noam Chomsky is
less than impressed by the popular technological tool.

In a scathing opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Noam
Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT”, Chomsky collaborated with
linguistics professor Ian Roberts and director of artificial
intelligence at a tech company Jeffrey Watumull.

“OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Sydney are marvels
of machine learning,” the three men wrote in the op-ed.

The trio described this as seeming to be the long-awaited time when
mechanical minds outperform human brains, not just in terms of
processing speed and memory size, but also in terms of intellectual
insight, creative inventiveness, and every other uniquely human
attribute.

“That day may come, but its dawn is not yet breaking, contrary to what
can be read in hyperbolic headlines and reckoned by injudicious
investments,” they wrote.

They added that “ChatGPT exhibits something like the banality of evil: plagiarism and apathy and obviation”.

Hannah Arendt, a political theorist and philosopher, invented the term “banality of evil” after attending the trial of Holocaust architect
and prominent Nazi Adolf Eichmann in 1961.

Arendt proposed that evil deeds were not always committed by evil
individuals, but might instead be the consequence of a bureaucrat
obediently carrying out orders.

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought, for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds
nothing there. That is the banality of evil,” wrote Arendt in Eichmann
in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

But what does this concept and its history have to do with AI?

“Given the amorality (having or showing no concern about whether
behaviour is morally right or wrong), faux science, and linguistic
incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their
popularity,” wrote the trio for the NYT.

They asserted that today’s seemingly revolutionary advances in
artificial intelligence are grounds for both concern and optimism.
Optimism stems from the fact that intellect is the mechanism by which
we overcome challenges.

“Concern because we fear that the most popular and fashionable strain
of AI – machine learning – will degrade our science and debase our
ethics by incorporating into our technology a fundamentally flawed
conception of language and knowledge.”

Source: https://t.co/TNCi1foDfm


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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