ChatGPT “gains in human intelligence”, announced AFP at the time of the release of the fourth version of the chatbot last March. Described by OpenAI as “less skilled than humans in many real-life scenarios, but just as effective (…) in many professional and academic contexts”, ChatGPT passed the competition for a major American business school, finished among the best in the bar exam across the Atlantic, makes perfect dissertations. In short, science fiction is gaining ground.
For their part, the AIs of Midjourney or Dall-E, capable of generating ultra-realistic images from a simple text, give rise to numerous debates on the future of creative professions. The press raises the specter of the destruction of jobs, the hysteria is general. But the exploits of algorithms are not new. In 2016, human intelligence was tested by DeepMind’s AlphaGo AI, which beat the world champion in Go, one of the most complex strategy games in the world. The worst scenarios of black-mirror are they coming to life? The hour of the digital singularity [le jour où l’intelligence des machines dépassera celle des hommes et où nous serons relégués au rang des animaux face à une IA forte] did she ring?
The man crushed by the machine
From a technological point of view, ChatGPT is nothing really new. “The sensational side of these systems, researchers had already had it in their hands since 2017”, explains Laurence Devillers, researcher at the CNRS, professor of AI at the Sorbonne and member of the CNPEN (National Pilot Committee for Digital Ethics). The novelty lies in the fact that we “put a research tool in the hands of everyone with a significant power”, she underlines.
After the Copernican, Darwinian and Freudian revolutions, AI is putting a new (and final?) slap on humanity. “Man believed himself to be the king of creation and, with Copernicus, he discovers that he is sailing on a small, narrow islet. He believed himself to be a descendant of God and, with Darwin, he discovers, to simplify, that he is descended from the monkey. He believed himself to be omniscient and, with Freud, he discovers that his consciousness is infinitely reduced compared to the blind spot of his unconscious. We do indeed have a metaphor for this narcissistic wound from the moment when the technique seems to crush it”, analyzes Jean-Michel Besnier, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and co-author Do robots make love (Dunod, 2016).
“It is not ChatGPT which is a revolution, observes Emmanuel Grimaud, anthropologist, research director at the CNRS within the Laboratory of ethnology and comparative sociology (LESC) and author of zero point god (PUF, 2021). In the history of technology, from the flint to the computer, we observe a great movement of outsourcing skills. We have done everything to externalize all possible forms of intelligence, memory and even sensitivity. And there, we reach an advanced stage, it becomes concrete for people and it is within reach. »
“If you’re not using ChatGPT, ChatGPT doesn’t exist”
The AI’s blow to humanity’s ego is somewhat different in nature from the scars it carried from the first three revolutions. For the machine is the creation of man. This could be seen as much as a scar to the ego as a reason to bulge out the chest. And remember that without us, they are nothing. Moreover, researchers prefer to speak of “computing power” rather than “intelligence”. “We tend to confront men and machines, forgetting that in reality these machines, as alienating or strange as they may seem, are our creations and feed on our daily movements. If you don’t use ChatGPT, ChatGPT doesn’t exist”, notes Emmanuel Grimaud.
This certainly explains the ambivalence of man vis-à-vis his creature. Is he hurt to be overtaken by a machine or to see it as imperfect as he is? Neither one nor the other, for the anthropologist. “The narcissistic wound is not the fact that AI is beyond us, but that we ourselves are unable to control our impulses,” he continues. We are irrepressibly drawn to dispossession of ourselves. “The AI seems to create this feeling that we are no longer in control, but there is a jubilation in this loss of power, and this loss of initiative”, confirms Jean-Michel Besnier. And this fascination crossed with hysteria, let’s say it, is very palpable at the time of ChatGPT 4. The general public is seduced by the sensationalism of dystopian stories.
The depression of technological societies
Behind this transfer of responsibility to the machine, for Jean-Michel Besnier, there is above all the sign of a great depression of our technologized societies. “From the 1960s, a current of thought aims to say that humanity has had its day. There is the idea that the human species is predatory and that it does not have to congratulate itself, describes the philosopher. It had produced totalitarianism, ecological disorders…. The machine cannot do worse than the human”. It can, on the contrary, rectify its errors by inventing solutions. This is technological solutionism. In a sort of headlong rush, we imagine that technology could repair the damage caused by technology.
“It is also the logic of transhumanists”, observes Jean-Michel Besnier. According to proponents of this current, such as Ray Kurzweil, pioneer in AI and former director of engineering at Google, the digital singularity will mark the moment when AI will take over. “If humans no longer love each other, if they consider humanity to be bad, they can tell themselves that anything can replace humans and it will always be better than them, points out the philosopher. There are forms of hyperactivity that psychiatrists identify as the reverse of low self-esteem: I don’t like myself, so I run away from technique”. Depression leads humans to want to run away from themselves. With technology, humans are pushing back their own limits: defying death, delaying the signs of old age, finding refuge on Mars… “The hyperactivity that characterizes technological societies is the reverse of this escape from oneself”, concludes Jean-Michel Besnier. But, if humanity no longer loves itself, the ego deflates. There is nothing left to hurt.