WORLDVIEW ETHICS — Moral Philosophy & The AI Panic

What is it about artificial intelligence that has the world in such an uproar? An open letter is being circulated (Future of Life, 2023) after being signed by heads of industry and famous thinkers including Max Tegmark and a number of other respectable minds. In the letter, referred to in this piece as the AI Panic Letter, which calls for a pause in development of AI systems more powerful than ChatGPT4 for six months, the argument is made that people aren’t ready to be bombarded with poor quality baseless content. The rationale given for this atypical course of action is poorly explained and out of touch with reality: IT systems already flood the market with untruth and misinformation, the only difference being that most of it today is more or less written by people. Further, experts from across fields in the cognitive sciences relevant to the claim that ChatGPT represents a “digital mind” would dispute the claim that seems implied here, that ChatGPT is a sentient, conscious entity. Even if one dissents with respect to the AI chatbot’s powers described in this way, as cognitive science all-star Dr. Melanie Mitchell does, the array of famous names that signed the letter demands attention and perhaps even gives us a reason to reflect deeply upon the situation we find ourselves in. This essay will lay out the situation around the AI Panic Letter in terms of a newly developed…