Dear children, learn how to write, so you’ll also know how to regulate Artificial Intelligence
Using ChatGPT and other generative Artificial Intelligence systems to write (but also to build images, prepare speeches, simulate dialogues to be staged). Playing digitally with words. Producing sentences full of meaning. Filling apparently new pages with concepts developed, over time, by philosophers and historians, writers and sociologists, journalists and economists. Reproducing complex analyses in a few seconds and trying to use them to produce effective summaries. All this is attempted because “AI GPT writer” is “the Artificial Intelligence Chatbot that knows everything”, as Apple’s communication emphatically states.
Whether you like it or not, it’s a formidable and awe-inspiring new high-tech tool that we have among us. Its astounding possibilities shock and unsettle us. They trigger fears, including for the future of millions of people who see their jobs threatened. And it naturally poses cultural and moral, social and political, economic and legal questions (how to distinguish true from false? Who owns the intellectual property of a “new” text produced by assembling sentences by various authors recovered in the archives and reworked? And how should the profits generated by such a particular work of ingenuity be distributed?).
This is not the place to answer these many questions (maybe you could ask ChatGPT and see what it says). On the other hand, if anything, it’s an opportunity to try to think about a key issue: rather than demonising generative AI, in a sort of high-tech new Luddism, isn’t it better to understand it, control its results, regulate its processes? In other words, follow the old cultural and ethical lesson that, for a few centuries, has rightly wanted machines to be at the service of man and not the other way round. And manage the new technologies to improve people’s quality of life, avoiding that “domination of technology” that would humiliate humanity (thus trying to avoid the dangers feared by Martin Heidegger and, in terms of Italian economic history, translate into consistent choices and behaviours the pillars of “industrial humanism” dear to Olivetti and Pirelli’s development and business culture).
In summary: we need to know how to make sophisticated use of words to oversee the product of those who assemble words technologically and we need to have an in-depth knowledge of language to “use” ChatGPT products instead of just lazily receiving them and, therefore, being used by them.
The key issue is: the growing gap between the possibilities offered by AI and the increasingly stilted and impoverished language with which it knows how to name the things of the world less and less effectively. The mind-blowing technologies that we have available, in fact, open the door to new knowledge and demand new intellectual and linguistic syntheses (AI algorithms and systems must be written by combining the multidisciplinary skills of mathematicians, physicists, cyber scientists, statisticians but also philosophers, writers, economists, jurists, sociologists, etc.). But, over time, the language of millions of people has radically narrowed and dried up, our ability to use words has been reduced, the syntax in daily speeches is increasingly schematic, thanks partly to the habit of using social media and mental patterns such as “likes” and emojis, to contain any judgment in the 140 characters of a tweet (even when a more articulated and complex reasoning would be necessary) and in the dryness of a post on Facebook or in the caption of an image pompously called a “story” on Instagram. In short, reducing the richness of reality into the binary code of “friends or enemies”.
It is worth rereading the lesson of a great philosopher like Ludwig Wittgenstein to remember that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world” and therefore understand that not only the power of representing one’s thoughts and values, but also the very substance of one’s freedom lie precisely in the ability to use words properly and build discourses. It is how we value points of view, interests. And how we protect and affirm rights. In the very close link that links freedom of speech and democracy. Conscious and critical public discourse. As well as the development it entails.
To move from philosophy to cinema, it’s worth remembering Nanni Moretti’s famous phrase in “Red Palombella”: “Words are important… Those who speak badly, think badly and live badly”. And, as for literature, Octavio Paz, a great Mexican writer, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990, wrote: ‘We do not know where evil begins, whether from words or from things, but when words become corrupted and meanings become uncertain, the meaning of our actions and of our works also becomes equally precarious. Things rely on their names and vice versa’. Because, again “a country becomes corrupted when its syntax becomes corrupted”.
Therefore, the growing inability, increasingly widespread among the new generations, to fully use the language, to express themselves with all the richness that vocabulary and syntax allow, cannot but create alarm.
“Today, children no longer know how to write,” Paolo Di Stefano notes in the “Corriere della Sera” (13 March), giving substance to the criticisms and concerns that emerge from the various worlds of culture, professions, journalism and publishing. And noting that “after schools, university studies should further the exercise of reasoning and therefore of writing, but instead oral exams prevail and the so-called ‘closed questions’ (tick a box) require no written processing”. And yet, writing well means reading well and therefore understanding well the reality that we have around us and knowing how to tell a story, explain, criticise, arguing how to change and reconstruct it.
So, a cultural challenge. Social. And civil. Because “conscious citizenship, the prime objective of a mature country, is not expressed through tweets and posts, but through broad (and, why not? complex) reasoning that only the exercise of logical, clear, careful writing – as opposed to cumbersome, confused, approximate writing – can guarantee.”
Going back to writing, is therefore necessary. And so is re-evaluating handwriting, also because it is a technique that condenses thoughts, stimulates synthesis, and better interprets the time for reflection and understanding.
Reasoning is fundamental, for the new generations. Their digital aptitude and their critical intelligence are needed, precisely to deal with all the issues posed by Artificial Intelligence. But they must simultaneously know how to invest the capital of wisdom contained in language carefully, in well-constructed words used in the right way. Because “there are words that make you live…”, as a productive poet, Paul Eluard, wisely knew how to write, rhyming them,… “the word courage the word discover/ the word warmth the word trust/ justice love and the word freedom…”.
(Photo Getty Images)
Using ChatGPT and other generative Artificial Intelligence systems to write (but also to build images, prepare speeches, simulate dialogues to be staged). Playing digitally with words. Producing sentences full of meaning. Filling apparently new pages with concepts developed, over time, by philosophers and historians, writers and sociologists, journalists and economists. Reproducing complex analyses in a few seconds and trying to use them to produce effective summaries. All this is attempted because “AI GPT writer” is “the Artificial Intelligence Chatbot that knows everything”, as Apple’s communication emphatically states.
Whether you like it or not, it’s a formidable and awe-inspiring new high-tech tool that we have among us. Its astounding possibilities shock and unsettle us. They trigger fears, including for the future of millions of people who see their jobs threatened. And it naturally poses cultural and moral, social and political, economic and legal questions (how to distinguish true from false? Who owns the intellectual property of a “new” text produced by assembling sentences by various authors recovered in the archives and reworked? And how should the profits generated by such a particular work of ingenuity be distributed?).
This is not the place to answer these many questions (maybe you could ask ChatGPT and see what it says). On the other hand, if anything, it’s an opportunity to try to think about a key issue: rather than demonising generative AI, in a sort of high-tech new Luddism, isn’t it better to understand it, control its results, regulate its processes? In other words, follow the old cultural and ethical lesson that, for a few centuries, has rightly wanted machines to be at the service of man and not the other way round. And manage the new technologies to improve people’s quality of life, avoiding that “domination of technology” that would humiliate humanity (thus trying to avoid the dangers feared by Martin Heidegger and, in terms of Italian economic history, translate into consistent choices and behaviours the pillars of “industrial humanism” dear to Olivetti and Pirelli’s development and business culture).
In summary: we need to know how to make sophisticated use of words to oversee the product of those who assemble words technologically and we need to have an in-depth knowledge of language to “use” ChatGPT products instead of just lazily receiving them and, therefore, being used by them.
The key issue is: the growing gap between the possibilities offered by AI and the increasingly stilted and impoverished language with which it knows how to name the things of the world less and less effectively. The mind-blowing technologies that we have available, in fact, open the door to new knowledge and demand new intellectual and linguistic syntheses (AI algorithms and systems must be written by combining the multidisciplinary skills of mathematicians, physicists, cyber scientists, statisticians but also philosophers, writers, economists, jurists, sociologists, etc.). But, over time, the language of millions of people has radically narrowed and dried up, our ability to use words has been reduced, the syntax in daily speeches is increasingly schematic, thanks partly to the habit of using social media and mental patterns such as “likes” and emojis, to contain any judgment in the 140 characters of a tweet (even when a more articulated and complex reasoning would be necessary) and in the dryness of a post on Facebook or in the caption of an image pompously called a “story” on Instagram. In short, reducing the richness of reality into the binary code of “friends or enemies”.
It is worth rereading the lesson of a great philosopher like Ludwig Wittgenstein to remember that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world” and therefore understand that not only the power of representing one’s thoughts and values, but also the very substance of one’s freedom lie precisely in the ability to use words properly and build discourses. It is how we value points of view, interests. And how we protect and affirm rights. In the very close link that links freedom of speech and democracy. Conscious and critical public discourse. As well as the development it entails.
To move from philosophy to cinema, it’s worth remembering Nanni Moretti’s famous phrase in “Red Palombella”: “Words are important… Those who speak badly, think badly and live badly”. And, as for literature, Octavio Paz, a great Mexican writer, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990, wrote: ‘We do not know where evil begins, whether from words or from things, but when words become corrupted and meanings become uncertain, the meaning of our actions and of our works also becomes equally precarious. Things rely on their names and vice versa’. Because, again “a country becomes corrupted when its syntax becomes corrupted”.
Therefore, the growing inability, increasingly widespread among the new generations, to fully use the language, to express themselves with all the richness that vocabulary and syntax allow, cannot but create alarm.
“Today, children no longer know how to write,” Paolo Di Stefano notes in the “Corriere della Sera” (13 March), giving substance to the criticisms and concerns that emerge from the various worlds of culture, professions, journalism and publishing. And noting that “after schools, university studies should further the exercise of reasoning and therefore of writing, but instead oral exams prevail and the so-called ‘closed questions’ (tick a box) require no written processing”. And yet, writing well means reading well and therefore understanding well the reality that we have around us and knowing how to tell a story, explain, criticise, arguing how to change and reconstruct it.
So, a cultural challenge. Social. And civil. Because “conscious citizenship, the prime objective of a mature country, is not expressed through tweets and posts, but through broad (and, why not? complex) reasoning that only the exercise of logical, clear, careful writing – as opposed to cumbersome, confused, approximate writing – can guarantee.”
Going back to writing, is therefore necessary. And so is re-evaluating handwriting, also because it is a technique that condenses thoughts, stimulates synthesis, and better interprets the time for reflection and understanding.
Reasoning is fundamental, for the new generations. Their digital aptitude and their critical intelligence are needed, precisely to deal with all the issues posed by Artificial Intelligence. But they must simultaneously know how to invest the capital of wisdom contained in language carefully, in well-constructed words used in the right way. Because “there are words that make you live…”, as a productive poet, Paul Eluard, wisely knew how to write, rhyming them,… “the word courage the word discover/ the word warmth the word trust/ justice love and the word freedom…”.
(Photo Getty Images)