is chatgpt more like gun control climate change or nuclear war

By Dr. Jim Castagnera, Esq.

Partner, Portum Group International, LLC

Does the title of this week’s Blog startle you?  Does it leave you incredulous? If so, well, I’ve grown used to such reactions through the years.  You see, I’ve been asserting for more than a decade now that Artificial Intelligence --- A.I. --- presents an existential threat to us humans.  This is certainly not my own unique opinion.  Nor does serious concern date back just a mere decade.

In fact, dystopian views of technology can be found at least as far back as the mid-20th century.  For instance, the famous novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano --- originally released way back in 1952 --- postulated an America in which a small minority of Ph.D.s oversaw literally all meaningful economic and political activities.  The rest of the population were assigned to busy work, such as road repairs, in return for food, clothing, shelter and healthcare.  

More recent and far more ominous are the Terminator movies --- now six in all, extending from 1984 through 2019.  According to Wikipedia, “Terminator is an American media franchise created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd. The franchise encompasses a series of science fiction action films, comics, novels and additional media, concerning a total war between Skynet's synthetic intelligence – a self-aware military machine network – and John Connor's Resistance forces comprising the survivors of the human race.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(franchise)]

If you ask me, our real future probably lies closer to Vonnegut’s novel than to Cameron’s films. Occasionally, I’ve been laughed at, when I’ve expressed that view.  Some six or eight years ago, no less an academic light than Professor Andrew Delbanco, recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama and “America’s Best Social Critic” per Time in 2001, chuckled when I asked him if students should be concerned about their own redundancy.  Students have always found ways to manage and those in the Rider University classroom, where he was a guest speaker, would be no different.  Though Dr. Delbanco’s achievements are head-and-shoulders above my own, my instinct then was to think him mistaken.

Fast forward to mid-2023, and I am more convinced than ever of my position.  Why?  I can answer in a word: “ChatGPT.”  In November 2022, the company calling itself Open AI unleashed this product on the world.  It has since been joined by Google Bard and other so-called chatbots.  How large a threat do they pose to our workforce status quo?  Just ask the Hollywood writers who have been on strike for a couple of months now.  Many of them underpaid already, they face the prospect of replacement by these chatbots for such fundamental tasks as producing original scripts and rewriting extant work.  Little wonder that the writers want their new collective bargaining agreement, when it’s finally inked, to include a clear declaration that their bread-and-butter work product must be  created only by human beings.

“The first of what is sure to be many labor protests against artificial intelligence has already begun. It started with Hollywood writers who wanted to make sure they won’t be forced to work with — or be replaced by — AI tools like ChatGPT. But it has already grown beyond that. And it’s not hyperbolic to say that what’s happening in Hollywood right now will have broad ramifications for, well, all of us.” [https://www.polygon.com/23742770/ai-writers-strike-chat-gpt-explained]

Back in 1991, another distinguished academic, Dr. Robert B. Reich, wrote in The Work of Nations, “Almost everyone around the world is buying the skills and insights of Americans who manipulate oral and written symbols --- musicians, sound engineers, film producers, makeup artists, directors, cinematographers, actors and actresses, boxers, scriptwriters, songwriters, and set designers.” (page 220, my emphasis)  These “symbolic analysts”, as he dubbed them, were on top of the world, while hapless fellow Americans in manufacturing were in the economic toilet.  

Today, that’s no longer the case.  Those of us providing “symbolic-analytic” services are no longer untouchable by technology.  We lawyers, doctors, and, yes, scriptwriters, are in danger of becoming redundant, just like workers in the manufacturing sector.

I don’t know how Dr. Delbanco or Dr. Reich would view my argument, should they happen to stoop from their lofty perches and read it.  I can attest to hearing one big-firm lawyer refer to ChatGPT as “the latest toy.”  For those who view ChatGPT in that light, A.I. can be analogized to climate change, as it was viewed as recently as just a few years ago… and is still viewed by many Americans even today.  Despite the world having just last week experienced the hottest three successive days since weather has been recorded, some still deny that human-generated, permanent warming of the planet is a fact. 

Likewise, many will remain in denial of the revolutionary, permanently disruptive nature of A.I. until we reach the Singularity --- that moment in time, perhaps ten, or as few as five, years away --- when a machine will be just as smart (or smarter) than the brightest of human minds.

We seem destined to endure an ever-warmer planet with ever-more severe and unpredictable weather patterns, despite all the hand wringing about climate change.  We are the prisoners of our own technology… the carbon-dioxide generating machines which we can’t do without.  We will need our fossil fuels for a very long time to come, whether we like that fact or not.  

By contrast, we could get along just fine without ChatGPT.  But will we?  In a word: “No.”  Human societies have seldom been able to resist technological innovation, especially when money was to be made.  The Japanese resisted Western technology until the American Commodore Perry forced the determinedly isolationist Nipponese to open their nation to commerce.  “Perry arrived in Japanese waters with a small squadron of U.S. Navy ships, because he and others believed the only way to convince the Japanese to accept western trade was to display a willingness to use its advanced firepower. At the same time, Perry brought along a variety of gifts for the Japanese Emperor, including a working model of a steam locomotive, a telescope, a telegraph, and a variety of wines and liquors from the West, all intended to impress upon the Japanese the superiority of Western culture.” [https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/opening-to-japan]

Other examples of resisting new technologies, which were being driven forward by the profit motive, are few and far between.  In this sense, ChatGPT is  like guns.  As with climate change, the proliferation of assault rifles and the record number of mass shootings so far this year in the U.S. have led to much hand wringing… but little else.  Our esteemed Supreme Court tells us Americans we have the Constitutional right to possess and carry firearms… never mind that the language of the Second Amendment will just as well support a contrary conclusion.  The political will is sorely lacking in our over-armed, under-informed society.

The same may be said about ChatGPT, unless…  

And this brings me to nuclear war.  Remarkably, for nearly 90 years the realization of “mutually assured destruction” has prevented the so-called Super-Powers from unleashing their nuclear arsenals on one another… or on anybody else for that matter.

The thing about climate change and gun control is that the body count has never gotten high enough, although one might think that even a single Sandyhook would persuade even the densest or most callous mind.  The proliferation of firearms in the U.S. simply isn’t perceived as an existential threat.  And many, perhaps most, Americans are in denial about the existential nature of global warming.  Nuclear holocaust, by way of contrast, is perceived to be the one undeniable, undisputed existential threat lurking in a dark corner of humanity’s living room.

Only if, or when, the Singularity is achieved --- as is inevitable --- and perceived as an existential threat to human society as we know it, might adequate action be taken to tame A.I.  Until then, like climate change and gun control --- despite Elon Musk’s prescient observation that “ChatGPT is scary smart” --- A.I. will be embraced by the billionaires of corporate America and viewed as a “toy” by those who fail to see that, like Ralphie in “A Christmas Story”, the toy can shoot out their eyes.