Jan 1, 2023·edited Jan 1, 2023Liked by Justin Tauber
Thanks Justin - food for thought. I'm not yet sure where I stand on ChatGPT. I've been doing a lot of 'playing with text' over the past few weeks, and I love what I can do with the tool. But I'm glad someone's addressed the bullshit problem (at least we don't have to continue politely ignoring the smell!). We can certainly expect a 10x increase in the production of bullshit from this point, can't we? It fills me with dread. Every BS artist in the world just got really smart about .... well, everything, and they're not going to be shy about it. Maybe Fact Checking should be among the growing professions you've listed in your article?
On a philosophical note, it's not the machines that are responsible for bullshiting, is it? A machine has no intention to speak the truth - no stake in the 'truth game' at all. So I don't see how we can level a moral charge against it (unless we acknowledge it's sentience, which you're clearly not doing). It is we humans, caught up in the discourse machines of the knowledge economy, who bear the responsibility for bullshit. Reading your article, I had a terrifying vision of the bullshit economy to come: on the demand side, the insatiable hunger of corporations and social media ecosystems, demanding ever more content and provocative speech-acting to keep the wheels of marketing in motion; on the supply side, millions of happy BS artists fed by AI, trading their integrity for a buck. Machines feeding machines, with humans greasing the wheels - it really does sound like the Matrix, doesn't it?
At the same time, the somewhat sanguine and/or incautious part of me is looking forward to seeing what amazing things intelligent and creative people can do with these new tools. Not everyone cares to be a bullshit artist, after all. ChatGPT has just removed a lot of the shit work from the labours of intelligent and creative people - I think that's a good thing. A point I'd add to your reflection is that the unconscious is a bullshit machine too. The majority of what pops into our head is sheer, unadulterated nonsense - the work of intelligence is to filter, hone, and fact check ourselves until we have something we can present to the world. I find that ChatGPT helps accelerate this process immensely. I don't need to sit around churning through my own bullshit to produce the raw material for intelligent thought - I can hand that labour over to the machine.
Of course, as soon as I've posted this, I discover Ian Bogost's excellent article in the Atlantic, where he makes similar points, but goes on to describe something like Chat-GPTs best self as a kind of "aesthetic instrument" with which to "play text", like one plays music on a synthesizer. Bogost implores us to interpret Chat-GPT without being boring, by focusing on things like take home exams. "Imagine worrying about the fate of take-home essay exams, a stupid format that everyone hates but nobody has the courage to kill." I'll let you be the judge of whether I've fallen into that trap. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386/
Thanks Justin - food for thought. I'm not yet sure where I stand on ChatGPT. I've been doing a lot of 'playing with text' over the past few weeks, and I love what I can do with the tool. But I'm glad someone's addressed the bullshit problem (at least we don't have to continue politely ignoring the smell!). We can certainly expect a 10x increase in the production of bullshit from this point, can't we? It fills me with dread. Every BS artist in the world just got really smart about .... well, everything, and they're not going to be shy about it. Maybe Fact Checking should be among the growing professions you've listed in your article?
On a philosophical note, it's not the machines that are responsible for bullshiting, is it? A machine has no intention to speak the truth - no stake in the 'truth game' at all. So I don't see how we can level a moral charge against it (unless we acknowledge it's sentience, which you're clearly not doing). It is we humans, caught up in the discourse machines of the knowledge economy, who bear the responsibility for bullshit. Reading your article, I had a terrifying vision of the bullshit economy to come: on the demand side, the insatiable hunger of corporations and social media ecosystems, demanding ever more content and provocative speech-acting to keep the wheels of marketing in motion; on the supply side, millions of happy BS artists fed by AI, trading their integrity for a buck. Machines feeding machines, with humans greasing the wheels - it really does sound like the Matrix, doesn't it?
At the same time, the somewhat sanguine and/or incautious part of me is looking forward to seeing what amazing things intelligent and creative people can do with these new tools. Not everyone cares to be a bullshit artist, after all. ChatGPT has just removed a lot of the shit work from the labours of intelligent and creative people - I think that's a good thing. A point I'd add to your reflection is that the unconscious is a bullshit machine too. The majority of what pops into our head is sheer, unadulterated nonsense - the work of intelligence is to filter, hone, and fact check ourselves until we have something we can present to the world. I find that ChatGPT helps accelerate this process immensely. I don't need to sit around churning through my own bullshit to produce the raw material for intelligent thought - I can hand that labour over to the machine.
Of course, as soon as I've posted this, I discover Ian Bogost's excellent article in the Atlantic, where he makes similar points, but goes on to describe something like Chat-GPTs best self as a kind of "aesthetic instrument" with which to "play text", like one plays music on a synthesizer. Bogost implores us to interpret Chat-GPT without being boring, by focusing on things like take home exams. "Imagine worrying about the fate of take-home essay exams, a stupid format that everyone hates but nobody has the courage to kill." I'll let you be the judge of whether I've fallen into that trap. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386/