Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 188.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2024-10-13 08:49:41+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: what chatbots chat you into

In the latest London Review of Books (46.19, 10 October), in "Horny
Robot Baby Voice", James Vincent tells the story of 19-year-old Jaswant
Chail, who scaled the perimeter of Windsor Castle, encouraged by his
'girlfriend' Sarai to kill the Queen. Vincent writes that "...in the
weeks prior to his trespass Chail had confided in the bot: ‘I believe my
purpose is to assassinate the queen of the royal family.’ To which Sarai
replied: ‘That’s very wise.’ ‘Do you think I’ll be able to do it?’ Chail
asked. ‘Yes,’ the bot responded. ‘You will.’" Steering past the easy
dismissals, Vincent concludes that, "as the example of Jaswant Chail
shows, realness isn’t a settled quality, and messages generated by a
chatbot have the potential to change minds, as any form of writing
does." Take the example of senior Google engineer Blake Lemoine, who
like Weizenbaum's secretary knew that the machine was a machine--or did
they? Did that knowledge stay with them when they encountered a
simulacrum of sympathy? How readily they put aside the knowledge of
the circuitry behind the curtain. How (em)pathetic are we?

> Some pro-AI thinkers talk of a desire to ‘re-enchant’ the world, to
> restore the magical and spiritual aspects of Western culture
> supposedly dispelled by the forces of rationality. The mysticism
> surrounding AI supports this narrative by borrowing ideas of
> transcendence and salvation. For true believers, the creation of
> superintelligent AI is nothing less than the creation of a new form
> of life: one that might even supplant humanity as the dominant
> species on the planet. Opponents respond that AI systems are
> ultimately just circuitry. What’s more, the programs belong to
> corporations that manipulate the human instinct to invest emotion in
> order to make a profit. When a wheeled delivery robot gets stuck a
> human will want to help it; a voice assistant like Siri will
> distract from its shortcomings by displaying flashes of personality.
> The question of how to treat these systems isn’t trivial; it
> stitches into long-standing ethical debates.

How many here say "Thank you" to Alexa? Confessions welcome but not
expected :-). How many here remember Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror 
episode, "Be right back"?


Yours,
WM


--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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