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ChatGPT unlikely to ‘usurp human minds’

Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba, IT in government editor
Johannesburg, 10 Mar 2023

Human minds are enhanced by technology, and ChatGPT is another step in the enhancement of human minds.

This was the word from George Gilder, senior fellow and co-founder of the Discovery Institute, discussing the emergence ofthe viral text-based chatbot.

Gilder participated in a panel discussion at the Huawei-hosted Digital Talent Summit on the sidelines of the recent Mobile World Congress 2023, in Barcelona.

He was joined by Dr Ricardo Gil da Costa, CEO and co-founder of Neuroverse; and Ayoub Gamas and Louis Roßmann, two former students of Huawei’s Seeds for the Future programme.

“ChatGPT is just another phase in the evolution of the computer industry,” Gilder stated. “The idea that it’s something radically different that it usurps human minds is just preposterous, in my view.”

ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, is a natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

It has the ability to interact in conversational dialogue form and provide responses that can appear human. It can also draft prose, poetry or computer code on command.

Gilder noted ChatGPT is a “great” step forward, but it is retrospective.

It can’t really be original, he explained. “It doesn’t do high entropy creativity but it is a valuable supplement to human minds.”

Gil da Costa agreed, saying ChatGPT is just one more tool. “In our field, we refer to something as augmented cognition, and there’s a lot of talk about AI and competition between the biological brain and the AI brain, [but] there’s no competition.

“The point is we’re humans, we’re biological. The good thing is that we can augment our capabilities…so there’s this notion of augmented cognition where we use AI, machine learning systems, and any advancement technology to connect with.”

Gil da Costa anticipates there will be a big change in user interfaces, noting it’s already happening. “We went from writing things, to tablets or screens. There’s going to be some level of ‘hacking’ into the brain to connect…where we can take advantage of the things a human brain does best and the things that computation does best.

“We’ll see more of these tools [ChatGPT] incorporated into our daily lives; we’re going to see changes in user brain interfaces, and we’ll see companies trying to find different ways for people to interact with the technologies.”

For 22-year-old German student Roßmann, he believes ChatGPT is only the start of what AI can do. “For me, I think it’s the future.”

From left: Discovery Institute’s George Gilder; Dr Ricardo Gil da Costa, CEO and co-founder of Neuroverse; and Ayob Gamas and Louis Roßmann, former students of Huawei’s Seeds for the Future programme.
From left: Discovery Institute’s George Gilder; Dr Ricardo Gil da Costa, CEO and co-founder of Neuroverse; and Ayob Gamas and Louis Roßmann, former students of Huawei’s Seeds for the Future programme.

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