Artificial intelligence has justifiably invaded the public conversation: the potential that the ChatGPT tool (a kind of robot from the OpenAI company capable of conversing with the user) offers is formidable, and millions and millions of people have already discovered its ability to answer.
Both the US and China and different European states, including Spain, have activated mechanisms to study possible unwanted effects.
The suspicion of violating the legislation on data protection has been the cause to open an investigation by the Spanish Agency for Data Protection, as has also been announced that the body that coordinates the European agencies will do (while Italy has blocked access to ChatGPT) .
They argue that generative AI could be feeding on both private data and billing data from users and companies, including the conversations that each citizen has with the system to train the algorithms.
Do you answer the same about Franco when asked the same question from a Vox or Podemos voter?
In fact, there are indications that he invents answers that seem plausible but unfounded.
These are legitimate concerns regarding its impact in multiple humanistic fields —from teaching to journalism or recreational knowledge.
The tool draws on what is within its reach: the entire internet, although it should exclude (according to European regulations) limited access data banks or sources protected by copyright.
The discursive consistency of the artificially generated text may be enough to convey as truthful what is only plausible or merely coherent.
But in countless human affairs there is no reference truth, there is none about abortion, drug use or sexuality.
The ability to refine responses that are persuasive for the user, according to their own response expectation trained by the algorithm,
it is part of the problem because there is no single answer to most of the questions that we humans ask ourselves.
Commissioner Thierry Breton's recommendation perhaps falls short: not only should it be warned that the response is produced by artificial intelligence, but also that nothing and no one can guarantee the correctness of the response offered.
It will be necessary to analyze its operation with reliable information and independently supervise the risks in order to make a prodigious invention profitable, without avoiding the harmful effects that its manipulation may have.