I'm fully aware that I'm going to sound like an old fart here, but I think much of what AI is promising to deliver is not just an advance in technology, but a lurch in the wrong direction and fundamentally bad in ways that all other technology up until this point was not.
Oh, count me Team Cranky Old Fart. AI is awful. Since Chat GPT arrived, I've been less bothered by the cheating part, and more by the way it reinforces that student feeling that there's a "right" answer to any question you ask, as well as a "right" way to frame their essay. Sigh. It's the textbook-i-zation of everything, and not a surprise from a tech world which generally thinks that literature and the humanities are kind of like lacrosse - a gentlemanly pastime that wouldn't matter if it vanished from the face of the earth.
The most baleful thing about AI, I think, is that unexamined assumption that it should more and more resemble human interactions. I had a long exchange with ChatGPT, where I asked why it used the first person pronoun. "There's no one there; why this affectation of human consciousness?" To which it replied, more or less, "I'm sorry you find this troubling. The people who designed me thought it would be more convenient and helpful if I interact in a human voice." I replied that it was absolutely not helpful, that it was fundamentally deceptive, that human cognition tends to project and anthropomorphize, that we struggle to distinguish between what's really "out there" and what we are projecting onto what's out there - so this pretend-humanity was incredibly dangerous. To which ChatGPT replied, "I'm sorry that you find this troubling. The people who designed me" etc. etc.
I mean - this is going to be very challenging to our grasp of reality, and our tendency to project. I've had to suppress a pang of imaginative anguish about pulling up a plant that was not contributing to the garden. ("Why?! I have been blooming just like you told me! Frank! Frank! Don't let her taa---") When she was little, my daughter would get out of bed to make sure that her various stuffed toys were able to communicate comfortably, should they wish to, during the night. People dress their dogs up in little outfits, or post videos of that first time a dog realizes that it is going to its forever home - as if a dog was aware of the mechanics of adoption. We project ourselves on all kinds of living things (ironically, often ignoring their real connections to us in the process) and onto inanimate things too. We're definitely going to struggle not to start seeing this phantom character as a real presence in our life.
And it's going to be driven by dodgy algorithms, oceans of code.... I guess the silver lining though is that it will likely end up as yet another rubbishy marketing tool, a gewgaw strapped to every last electronic gadget to soup it up. I bet we'll see AI-enhanced cookie jars, dog collars, toothbrushes, etc.
You're 100% correct. There is a whole backlash against AI building among workers affected by it, including teachers. Young, old, and all ages inbetween
Oh, count me Team Cranky Old Fart. AI is awful. Since Chat GPT arrived, I've been less bothered by the cheating part, and more by the way it reinforces that student feeling that there's a "right" answer to any question you ask, as well as a "right" way to frame their essay. Sigh. It's the textbook-i-zation of everything, and not a surprise from a tech world which generally thinks that literature and the humanities are kind of like lacrosse - a gentlemanly pastime that wouldn't matter if it vanished from the face of the earth.
The most baleful thing about AI, I think, is that unexamined assumption that it should more and more resemble human interactions. I had a long exchange with ChatGPT, where I asked why it used the first person pronoun. "There's no one there; why this affectation of human consciousness?" To which it replied, more or less, "I'm sorry you find this troubling. The people who designed me thought it would be more convenient and helpful if I interact in a human voice." I replied that it was absolutely not helpful, that it was fundamentally deceptive, that human cognition tends to project and anthropomorphize, that we struggle to distinguish between what's really "out there" and what we are projecting onto what's out there - so this pretend-humanity was incredibly dangerous. To which ChatGPT replied, "I'm sorry that you find this troubling. The people who designed me" etc. etc.
I mean - this is going to be very challenging to our grasp of reality, and our tendency to project. I've had to suppress a pang of imaginative anguish about pulling up a plant that was not contributing to the garden. ("Why?! I have been blooming just like you told me! Frank! Frank! Don't let her taa---") When she was little, my daughter would get out of bed to make sure that her various stuffed toys were able to communicate comfortably, should they wish to, during the night. People dress their dogs up in little outfits, or post videos of that first time a dog realizes that it is going to its forever home - as if a dog was aware of the mechanics of adoption. We project ourselves on all kinds of living things (ironically, often ignoring their real connections to us in the process) and onto inanimate things too. We're definitely going to struggle not to start seeing this phantom character as a real presence in our life.
And it's going to be driven by dodgy algorithms, oceans of code.... I guess the silver lining though is that it will likely end up as yet another rubbishy marketing tool, a gewgaw strapped to every last electronic gadget to soup it up. I bet we'll see AI-enhanced cookie jars, dog collars, toothbrushes, etc.
You're 100% correct. There is a whole backlash against AI building among workers affected by it, including teachers. Young, old, and all ages inbetween