A Critique of ChatGPT

A crucial reflection on the kind of world we are building as we acritically embrace the ongoing technological revolution.

Generative artificial intelligence is entering our daily lives not only through its more specialized applications, but by integrating itself into smartphones or search engines, that is for every day access to knowledge and communications. Developers, but also many analysts, consider it to be one of the most revolutionary technologies ever invented, capable of realizing the dream of producing machines as intelligent as we are or even more. With all the utopian – but also dystopian – consequences that this entails. However, there is growing criticism against this way of interpreting artificial intelligence, which seems rather the result of a clever marketing campaign aimed at making us overestimate its value and capabilities. Therefore, rather than exercising our imagination by foreshadowing an unrealistic sci-fi future, it is far more important to understand how Gen AI really works and what thorny problems it already poses. Problems that, if not properly addressed, will only get worse.