Recent developments
ChatGPT is massively popular among very different population groups: Students see the opportunity to emancipate themselves from an established Prussian ideal of hard work, professional creatives and marketing employees are helping themselves to find clever slogans, or generate entire blocks of text that read at first glance as if they came from a competent pen and even started programmers their everyday work increasingly through the use of AI-based assistants fluff it up. Depending on personal attitudes towards technological innovations, sense of tradition and/or socio-economic status, attitudes towards artificial intelligence fit into a continuum between “panacea” on the one hand and a general “demonic” of technical actors on the other. Meanwhile, the fear of technological entities taking over domains that are generally regarded as genuinely human is anything but new. As early as 1952, Rolf Strehl wrote in his popular science book The robots are among us The following lines: “We have to realize that today's electronic brains have probably only reached the embryonic stage of development, in technology — which until now has only been a material surface phenomenon — for the first time [sic!] penetrates into the deeper, no longer directly tangible layers of human existence. ”
Depending on personal attitudes towards technological innovations, sense of tradition and/or socio-economic status, attitudes towards artificial intelligence fit into a continuum between “panacea” on the one hand and a general “demonic” of technical actors on the other. ”
Ludificatory aspects
Both the initial lustful turn to AI As well as the resulting fascination completely understandable — on the contrary, it would be quite strange not to be amazed at all given the spit out coherent sentences and the sheer wealth of supposedly dense information. The problem with artificial intelligence comes up much more precisely when the instinct to play diminishes and you are inclined to give it serious tasks, perhaps even trusting the results unchecked. People usually use the help of artificial intelligence precisely when they have not informed themselves in detail in advance, or when there is effectively a lack of time to do so. However, exactly such a procedure is fatal! Because although almost everything that ChatGPT & Co. produce is formally correct and is also largely pleasant to read, it is also true that much of the information is abbreviated or simply incorrect when examined closely by a human user. Generally speaking, artificial intelligence is only a reflection of those interacting with it: with every request, it learns something new, i.e. it continuously supplements its knowledge repertoire, fills gaps and draws links between remote areas. Pretty much everyone can sing a song about the fact that such connections can also be drawn in the wrong way: Misunderstandings are part of human reality and can sometimes even appear to be downright productive! With regard to a supposedly omniscient entity that all too often has to be used as a tool, such a misunderstanding can have fatal consequences, especially when the tone leaves no room for doubt. ChatGPT, asked for a chronological listing of all defense ministers in the Federal Republic of Germany, elevates Olaf Scholz to this office in all seriousness after Christine Lambrecht. However, the whole thing is by no means subdued, but rather in a metaphorical chest tone of conviction. In this case, the error is due to the relative management of the training data set: after 2021, ChatGPT simply lacks the coherent data basis for up-to-date information. Although the algorithm appears to have information that goes beyond 2021 — Christine Lambrecht was only replaced by Boris Pistorius at the beginning of 2023 — there is no sign of doubt here. Especially in today's fast-paced world, is such an objective lack of knowledge hardly justifiable, or would you ask a Nobel Prize winner who has just woken from a coma to evaluate current events? Probably not. Even the creators of the GPT framework admit that the AI they created has glaring deficiencies: “It still is not fully reliable (it 'hallucinates' facts and makes reasoning errors).” However, where the OpenAI Consortium is optimistic about achieving the ultimate level of perfection, skeptical contemporaries are faced with the question of what the goal should actually be; an AI that acts as a human and, as it were, produces correct information reliably like clockwork is unthinkable simply because there is no objective reality independent of human beings and their deficient perceptions! According to phenomenology, which the world regards as a dangerous illusion, it could be stated that even an AI like the one behind ChatGPT has a human, even all too human, core.
Quo vadis, AI?
The future of dealing with AI is therefore much more likely to lie in a playful process that is able to provide potential experts with surprising feedback in some cases. For example, programmers can be assisted by tools such as Copilot — the name says it all — but the final evaluation to ensure quality is always the responsibility of human experts. It would be fatal to let an AI fill the gaps in your own body of knowledge, or — God forbid — even completely replace human labor with one. The small errors or appendium-like residuals that occur during production using AI may not be very significant in themselves; in the long term, they cause more difficulties than they promise short-term relief. Since work is not an end in itself, but ultimately always focuses on people, a sleight of hand such as general AI is a veritable smoke candle that testifies more to a pure “god complex” in the tech industry than to the idea of benevolent relief of human beings.
It may sound tempting to delegate simple tasks to technological players at first, but a world in which algorithms primarily provide content for algorithms created a pretty tummy dystopia of preemption.
Preliminary final
Meanwhile, the assumption that the human perceptual apparatus could be overcome — nothing for me, nothing to you — must be overcome as downright simple-minded be rejected. After all, supposed answers from technological actors are delivered in such a way that they almost fit in with the social world. The mimicry of technology is both touching and embarrassing. On the other hand, it is just as negligent to assume that humans and technology are inherently different from one another and have no points of contact outside of a direct-functional relationship between User:in and used on. The techno-social amalgam of these days ensures that we can recognize people in every bit of technology and, conversely, an explicit technological reference in the human being shines through. An examination of this issue with explicit reference to the Actor network theory promises to shed light on the darkness: the social world and the technosphere are extremely closely intertwined, meticulously separating them from each other is neither possible nor desirable. As Bruno Latour put it programmatically in 1991, we are It has never been modern And it never will be: it is and remains impossible to draw a clear dividing line between nature and culture, between technosphere and social world, between pure science and discreet (but) faith. This fact is by no means to be regretted; on the contrary, it is a reason to breathe a sigh of relief! Cheers to asymmetrical solidarity!
In the meantime, excessive technocracy, a fundamentally preemptive and therefore meaningless world of algorithms, must be confronted just as boldly as a blanket “rejection of techniques perceived en bloc” (Gilbert Simondon).
This final appeal by the author, who admittedly looks subtly pathetic, may, of course, be rejected at any time. We are in a situation today that is much more like meandering Randonné Because one clear trajectory equals. It depends on how we make sustainable use of the available opportunities, whether we maneuver ourselves into mindless dependence or persist in no less critical fundamental opposition. Let's have a controversial discussion, make procrastination a virtuous alternative and not necessarily equate harsh criticism with a fundamental refusal to make progress!
