AI: Professor at USP makes ChatGPT mandatory in classes – 06/22/2023 – #Hashtag

Full associate professor at ECA/USP (School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo), Luli Radfahrer has been researching digital design and the impact of technologies on society for over 30 years.

The recent advancement of artificial intelligence has been one of Radfahrer’s favorite topics. “To tease: everyone talks about the alignment, but someone asked AGI’s opinion [inteligência artificial generativa, como o ChatGPT]? What if she wants humans to align with her?” he wrote on his LinkedIn profile.

On Twitter, the researcher has discovered countless new artificial intelligence tools that appear daily. It fascinates you.

In the classroom, unlike other initiatives around the world, Radfahrer says that using ChatGPT is mandatory. “I don’t win by trying to crush the student, I win by making him a better professional. And ChatGPT will do that”, he says.

Radfahrer also goes against the grain by not being so pessimistic about the advancement of AI. “The problems will come in the areas we haven’t tackled properly, like deepfakes and social media,” he says. “We are still on the edge of science fiction”, he adds.

Read full blog interview #Hashtag.

Should we fear artificial intelligence?
When Google mapped the streets of the whole world, everyone said a lot of things and today it is commonplace. Of course, changes will bring problems. So it was with the personal computer. But the consequences will come in the areas we didn’t address properly, like deepfakes and social media. Any step beyond that is like believing that electricity would end the world. Artificial intelligence has no agenda, no will of its own, it did not evolve from a reptilian brain like us, it has no primitive instincts.

But can’t machines get smarter than humans?
Artificial intelligence is capable of being smarter than man, but 90% of the fear is unfounded. Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom made some interesting conjectures. The superintelligent machine can appear anywhere, but then to think that there will be no other intelligent machine capable of stopping it is a mistake. A comparison that has been made is that the Spaniards arrived in the Inca Empire and, with a mixture of germs, weapons and steel, conquered civilization because Hernán Cortés’ group was received as a demigod. You can’t think we’re going to behave like this.

Estimates indicate that AI could affect more than 300 million jobs. Is this not worrying?
Artificial intelligence is very useful in what I call mental/hands work. We usually divide it into mental and manual work, but there are mental jobs that are completely manual. Journalists waste a lot of time with small edits, formatting. These developments have happened before, as in the case of Income Tax. The IRS program made many accountants lose money. Instagram took vacancy from those who used Photoshop. Photoshop had already done the same to photo labs. Technology has always eliminated jobs. The risk now is that artificial intelligence will take it to another level. The Industrial Revolution took 200 years to move people from the countryside to the city. The changes will now take place in five years. There will be a wave of underemployment.

What’s the use of having everyone employed in an underemployment? Even if you improve the quality of Uber, even if you earn $100,000 a month, being a driver is not a human job, it’s a job that in a perfect world shouldn’t exist. So much so that in Ancient Greece, manual labor was something for slaves, who were not citizens. The citizen philosophized, took part in politics and discussed citizenship. No one misses when children worked in factories. Eliminating underemployment is good. But it needs to be accompanied by an appreciation of education and a change in the economic model based on absolute growth and income concentration. The end of a post-industrial process is taking place, which is leading to an information economy, which we need to review.

But how to do it?
We need to think about how artificial intelligence can improve work that cannot be replaced. Some jobs like doctors, nurses, caregivers, primary school teachers, will never be replaced. Artificial intelligence will play the role of assistant. There is an entire professional structure that needs to be rethought. The first thing is to rethink how the social remuneration structure is made. Because some are well paid and some are poorly paid. There are others that can be automated. A lone individual who makes a lot of strategic decision can be replaced. Who works with people, no. AI will speed up this process. A social review is necessary, better training, some career training, so that we can have a quality of life that sustains the entire population.

We need to value the individual. When did the Macintosh appear? [computadores da Apple, em 1984], advertising agencies fired a bunch of photographers and illustrators. They should have invested in the guy who could draw.

How do you see these manifestos that come out from time to time against artificial intelligence?
These manifestos are cool, the problem is they’re screaming “be careful with that bike, you might break your neck”, but more likely you’ll get run over. There may be something, there may be, but we are on the edge of science fiction. Most likely there is a mega bug that shuts down the Amadeus system and planes all over the world go haywire. It’s easier to have a violent hacking attack like the one that brought down the British NHS.

What is the place of Sam Altman [CEO da OpenAI] in the tech world?
Sam Altman is more of a Steve Wozniak than Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. He is an enabler. He speaks in a smart way. The regulation is great for Sam Altman, because by the time he regulates he is already ahead, it prevents a new OpenAI from appearing. Nobody is an amateur, nobody is doing kindness. It’s worth looking at the initiatives, it’s someone who brought a new technology, someone who has a very clear ideal, which can generate a series of cool things. But he is not a threat.

After e-commerce came along came enablers like PayPal. It’s very early days to have a central figure in artificial intelligence. Even Steve Jobs was very focused on the Macintosh and only broke with the iPhone in 2007. It’s too early to propose new worlds.

How are big techs incorporating artificial intelligence?
Big techs would make a huge mistake if they didn’t realize the strength of AI. It would be like digital photography, which Kodak invented and didn’t understand evolution. It’s the dilemma of having something that’s powerful, and deciding whether to embrace it or ignore it. Altman works a lot with Microsoft. Before that, you wouldn’t consider installing Bing on your phone. Imagine the marketing that Altman does not generate for Microsoft. Artificial intelligence is a technology of progression. It will add to what we already have. Companies need to run after it, otherwise they will be swallowed up.

How do you analyze the use of ChatGPT in the classroom or at work?
Instead of banning ChatGPT, I made it mandatory to use the tool in the classroom. If you don’t know how to use it, you’re screwed. He’s that intern who thinks he knows everything. If you’re young and you have that intern, you can produce better work. If instead of sending me two pages of a paper the student sends me five, I don’t want to know which part was done by ChatGPT. I want it to be a good job. The student will learn to edit ChatGPT content, he will learn to read at a much higher level than he had today. I don’t win by trying to crush the student, I win by making him a better professional. So it’s better to use it as a strategy and not as a hack.

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