Neanderthals, our ancient human relatives, used to have slightly different physical features. They used to have larger noses than ours. Evolution was responsible for those large noses so that those humans could deal with the environment at the time. The distinct nose helped in warming and humidifying the cold and dry air of those ancient times.
Chat Gpt is sometimes described as a revolutionary product in the world of internet and AI. However, in my humble view, it’s actually an evolutionary product. Just as those large noses helped make breathing easy, Chat Gpt helps make feeling easy.
The humans of today are very inclined toward believing in conspiracy theories. Whether the coronavirus or climate change, we have crafted almost believable fiction to deal with harsh realities. Just as those noses made the air breathable, conspiracy theories make difficult-to-investigate truth digestible and entertaining by turning it into lies. Using the brain is much harder and an undesirable route than using something to relax the brain.
We share the planet with flat earthers. These are the people who believe the earth is flat, not round. Many believe that the moon landing was fake, that 9/11 was an American plot, that Bin Laden was an American agent, that Imran Khan is a Jewish agent, that skyscrapers are built with a pointed top in order to harness the devil’s energy, that the porn industry was created to destroy the Muslim youth, the list goes on.
What conspiracy theories do is they help us enjoy mental laziness. We don’t want to investigate or research the truth. We don’t want to come out of this comfort zone and try to understand the nuances of truth. So, we easily settle for some entertaining story someone tells and settle the matter. We very comfortably connect the dots using ridiculous pieces of information, some of which may be fake, and create a picture that our lazy brains can make sense of. I wish it was that easy.
What Chat Gpt does is to write the story for us. Noam Chomsky rightly said that Chat Gpt was basically “high-tech plagiarism” and “a way of avoiding learning”. No more explanation is necessary to describe it because that exactly is what it is. Chat Gpt is a high-tech product to help us avoid using our gray cells. This technology is an extension of an unbelievable human trait, which I’d take the liberty to label as the anti-curiosity.
Humans are usually understood to be driven by curiosity about the world and the universe in which they dwell. I am not so sure if I can say the same about the current lot because then Chat Gpt would be designed to find the unknown truth. It is rather a tool to create the truth for us. There’s nothing new it helps find. It only uses the existing imperfect ingredients to come up with something totally inside of the box. No human imagination or creativity involved.
Google, Meta and others are entering the AI race. It is the next big thing. They’re all busy making high-tech drugs to help humans indulge in mental laziness.
There’s a fine line between technology making human life easier and technology rendering humans useless because the one feature humans have that animals don’t is the intelligent brain. Many machines that mankind invented help humanity leap forward. Automobiles and planes help humans move faster than animals. Chat Gpt is a technology that can help humans outpace the animals again; except this time in repeating unintelligent steps needed in order for some higher being, such as Chat Gpt, to make decisions for them.
Einstein once said that imagination was more important than knowledge. Those words have never been more relevant than today. Chat Gpt uses a huge wealth of knowledge and information that’s in the ether. What it kills is the human imagination.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2023.
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