Recently, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chat robot developed by the American company OpenAI, has exploded, triggering discussions on artificial intelligence (AI) among many people around the world.
Since ChatGPT was launched at the end of last year, its active users have exceeded 100 million in 2 months, faster than TikTok and Instagram.
Many American students have used ChatGPT for their homework.
Many people who have long been concerned about artificial intelligence and science and technology believe that ChatGPT will have a disruptive impact.
From the perspective of multiple sources of information,
it is generally accepted that ChatGPT has relatively strong information integration capabilities and language processing capabilities, and has a wealth of knowledge. big challenge.
In addition, due to factors such as the language environment and basic training, the performance of ChatGPT in Chinese is relatively inferior to that in English.
However,
ChatGPT also has shortcomings, mainly manifested in obvious defects in originality, thoughtfulness, and creativity
, which means that artificial intelligence cannot replace humans in the short term.
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It should be noted that once technological development breaks through certain bottlenecks, the speed of upgrading iterations will be beyond imagination.
Although the current impact of artificial intelligence technology is limited in the short term. For example, ChatGPT mainly affects those relatively junior occupations, but the rapid self-learning and progress of artificial intelligence will definitely bring disruptive effects in the long run.
Regarding this point, Max Erik Tegmark, one of the founders of the Future of Life Institute and a tenured professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in his book "Life 3.0: Humanity in the Era of Artificial Intelligence". The Evolution and Rebirth of .
He believes: "Artificial intelligence has great potential in improving the manufacturing industry, and the efficiency and precision of the robots controlled by it have been greatly improved." This can be verified from the trend that industrial robots have replaced human labor.
He also believes that
artificial intelligence
will play an important role in the transportation industry, medical service industry, communication industry, and legal industry, and can improve the efficiency of energy optimization, help humans explore star systems outside the solar system, and promote the development of automated weapon systems .
Zhang Xiang, President of the University of Hong Kong, described ChatGPT as having a "revolutionary" impact on society and a challenge for the university.
(Photo by Ni Qingjiang)
These are all expected technological breakthroughs. Once they occur and scale up, they will have unprecedented impact, that is, most of the current jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence.
If this continues, the fate of mankind will face two possibilities: general freedom and liberation, or general unemployment and abandonment?
In Max Tegmark’s book discussing whether all human beings will be unemployed, he wrote: “If artificial intelligence continues to advance and automate more and more jobs... Many people are very optimistic about the employment situation. They believe that, While some occupations are being automated, other new and better jobs will be created. After all, similar things have happened in the past... and some people are very pessimistic about the employment situation. They believe that this time will be different , an unprecedentedly large number of people will not only lose their jobs, but even lose opportunities for reemployment... Some career optimists believe that after physical and mental occupations, there will be a new wave of occupations, which are creative occupations. But occupations The pessimists counter that creativity is just another kind of mental labor, and therefore will eventually be mastered by artificial intelligence.”
Elon Musk, the founder of American electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, released the humanoid robot Optimus on Artificial Intelligence Day.
(Screenshot of the conference video)
It is difficult to judge which of the above two possibilities is right and which is wrong.
But what is certain is that artificial intelligence is not human after all. Unless artificial intelligence has self-awareness, there will be some jobs that deal with people and involve human free will, such as philosophy, art, sociology and other humanities. social sphere.
More importantly, artificial intelligence is still in development, and humans still have the conditions and time to control the future direction of technological evolution.
This means that if the human society takes precautions, avoids the widespread unemployment and abandonment problems that may be brought about by the breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology as soon as possible, and liberates human beings from heavy work, then an ideal society where everyone has money and leisure will not be possible. No matter how far away.
As Max Tegmark puts it in his book: "
If we can use automation to promote economic prosperity without figuring out how to do it without depriving people of income and purpose in life, then we can create A future of leisure and unprecedented abundance for all
."
He mentioned in the book that after the great development of artificial intelligence technology, people's income and work will be disconnected. The easiest way is to issue a basic income to everyone every month. This income is unconditional and there is no obligation for the recipient. Require.
This suggestion makes sense, because if one day in the future, artificial intelligence can produce goods and services that meet the daily needs of all people at the lowest cost, then ordinary people today who are struggling to survive and fall into endless involution They can be liberated, and they can live comfortably through the fixed monthly basic income of human society, and then they can spend their main time on creative, humanistic work or interesting things.
But all of this has a major premise, that is, artificial intelligence will not be reduced to a tool for a few people to seek personal gain or rule all mankind, and a world democratic government that is responsible to and supervised by all mankind can be established.
A service robot pictured at the Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona, Spain.
(Xinhua News Agency)
Further question, will the great development of artificial intelligence technology lead to an explosion of intelligence, causing artificial intelligence to rule the world?
To many, this seemed an unlikely scenario.
After all, even if artificial intelligence technology is highly developed in the future, as long as there is no self-awareness, as long as it operates under the procedures, goals and frameworks set by humans, it should not be out of human control.
But this is only a hypothesis, it is difficult to assert that it must be the case.
Max Tegmark believes: "The reason why we can rule the earth now is because we are smarter than other life forms. Then, if a super intelligence smarter than us appears, it may also overthrow our rule ...
the history of life shows that it will always self-organize into more complex hierarchies shaped by cooperation, competition, and control. Superintelligence may enable cooperation on a larger cosmic scale, but it Whether it will ultimately lead to totalitarianism and top-down control, or more power to the individual, is unclear
... We need to think hard about what we want to see and how we can get there,
because if If we don’t think about what we want, we probably won’t get it
.”
In a word, in the short term, ChatGPT and the artificial intelligence technology it represents will play an increasingly important role in the labor market, bringing more convenient technologies and services, but there will be a period of technology maturity and promotion. The process will not suddenly bring subversive impact, and it is even less likely to replace human beings.
But in the long run, as the great leap in artificial intelligence technology takes place in the future, will it bring about general freedom and liberation of people, or widespread unemployment and abandonment of people, or the worst scenario-artificial intelligence will rule the world, to a large
extent It depends on whether humans can explore a set of ways to make artificial intelligence beneficial to the development and benefit of the people
.
Many things in the world are "predicted, not foregone", especially the artificial intelligence technology full of uncertainties.
If human beings don't want to live aimlessly and aimlessly, and if they don't want to sail into an unfortunate future, then it is imperative to plan ahead and use Taoism to control art.
