I am reading an article on my computer screen. “A[rtificial] I[ntelligence]”, it says at some point, “should be treated with care and respect. Robots in Greek [sic] means ‘slave’. But the word literally means ‘forced to work’. We don’t want that.” Well, I never, I think to myself. Robots are Greek? Robots too? Who would think. And then – treating AI with care? With respect? What does this mean?
I am reading an article on my screen. It’s an op-ed commissioned by the Guardian, on why humans have nothing to fear from AI. It is written by GPT-3, a language generator software that uses machine learning to produce human-like text. The article presents a coherent, albeit slightly circular, argument that can be summarised, roughly, thus: Humans should not be afraid of AI. Artificial Intelligence has nothing to gain from destroying humans. Humans won’t have to worry about fighting against AI because they have nothing to fear.
Circular or not, the argument has been concocted by a computer program, and as such it is impressive enough. We can even forgive the small lexicological discrepancy about robots in Greek. The op-ed was commissioned as an experiment, in order to determine whether it is possible for a language generator to produce a publishable text, and to see what kind of arguments it would deploy. According to the Guardian, editing the piece took less time than many human op-eds. However, it was not written in one go. The software produced eight different versions. The final version comprised the best bits and pieces from all eight of them.
