COMMON SENSE AND CHATGPT

 Common Sense does not live in ChatGpt.

The inability of AI systems to access the meaning of what they process makes them 'inhuman'.  The alienation of those who have to train them exacerbates the problem.

 The machine lacks a body, so its learning is based only on words.  To remedy this, it is not enough to increase the amount of text, especially if it is generated by other AI programmes.

 

- by VINCENZO AMBRIOLA

  "Dad, what is a sycamore tree?" Most of us would not know how to answer this question. Perhaps some know it is a tree, from the Gospel passage of Zacchaeus. And then from reading The Shadow of the Sycamore by John Grisham. The cooler ones might remember Down by the sycamore tree, a famous jazz tune by Stan Getz. But how many would be able to recognise a sycamore tree in a botanical garden? In our minds, words are linked both to real-world experiences through the five senses and to other words, in what constitutes an enormous semantic network managed by billions of neurons and synapses that connect them. The word sycamore, if present in this network, could be linked to the concepts of tree, book or jazz. That is why we would be able to answer a curious child.

Generative artificial intelligence, the one behind the operation of ChatGpt and many other similar systems, works by linking words together. Words are analysed in the sentences in which they appear, calculating the probability that they are associated with other words. When the user dialogues with the artificial intelligence system, the response is constructed using the neural network within it, word by word according to a process that also uses some randomness. Formulated at two different instants, the same question can result in a different answer. The substantial difference that exists between these systems and the human mind is the absence of information coming from reality and the total dependence on the words used during their learning. Basically, it is a-sensory knowledge combined with a predominantly statistical manipulation of words (treated as abstract symbols). Interaction with reality is thus what characterises us humans and transforms a continuous flow of information into verbally encoded knowledge.

Much of this knowledge constitutes 'common sense', a heritage passed on from generation to generation that enables us to survive in our environment and interact with other human beings, sharing the profound meaning of words. Words that for us are not just symbols, but semantic markers of reality. Common sense has always been and still is the subject of study and research. The development of computer science is closely linked to the many possible ways of capturing and representing it in so-called ontologies and using it in deductive, inductive and abductive automatic reasoning systems. Since the time of Aristotle, logic has been the greatest conceptual challenge for mankind.

  "We can know more than we can say," so wrote Michael Polanyi in his 1966 essay The Unexpressed Knowledge, in which he presented his research on implicit or tacit knowledge. At a time strongly influenced by a rationalist approach, the birth of electronic calculators and the ideas of Alan Turing, Polanyi questioned the possibility that a human being could have complete and explicit control over everything he knew. This was a strong and orthodox position, which rejected the project of formally codifying knowledge and then using it in a computational context.

  Generative artificial intelligence systems do not possess the equivalent of common sense, let alone an implicit knowledge of what they have learnt. They do not need common sense for survival, and, above all, it cannot be acquired through a sensory apparatus that they lack. They learn only through the words used in training and interact with humans only through these words. They are not able to move us with a look or calm us with a caress. To do this they would have to have a body, but then they would be robots and not conversational bots. In a recent article, Christopher Richardson and Larry Heck describe the state of the art of research projects that aim to add common sense into generative artificial intelligence systems. The negative conclusion of this study leaves no doubt when it states that "current systems exhibit limited common sense reasoning capabilities and negative effects on natural interactions".

 Training an AI system using a large amount of text is not enough. The neural network within it can be confused by relations between words that produce responses without any (common) sense, also called hallucinations. Further training is required. In many parts of the world (Kenya, Nepal, Malaysia, the Philippines, India), hundreds of thousands of individuals spend their day in front of a computer screen, interacting with the system, correcting its responses, identifying hallucinations. A tedious and repetitive job often underpaid and on the edge of economic survival. In 2007, Fei Li, then a professor at Princeton and an expert in AI, declared that to improve the quality of image recognition it would be necessary to manually tag millions of images and not a few tens of thousands. She was right and her strategy caused a new springtime for artificial intelligence.

Human nature wants the person in control of the machines and not subject to their domination. A group of researchers at Rice University recently discovered that the humans in charge of training AI systems, to relieve a repetitive and tedious operating procedure, use, however, these very same systems, in a way violating the indications they receive. In practice, the indications given by the trainers are generated 'synthetically' by the systems they are training, in what we can metaphorically call a 'computer incest' that could slowly degrade the quality of the trained neural network. The same problem is encountered when creating a new AI system, using texts from the Internet, which are increasingly generated by other AI systems.

Generative artificial intelligence is still in its infancy and, as such, is destined to grow and evolve. Its training based on human-produced texts makes it inevitably human-like. Its enormous computing power makes it perceived as superhuman, when for instance it can perform tasks that would be inconceivable to us in terms of the amount of calculation. The absence of common sense, however, reveals its inherent and inevitable inhumanity. At the present time, the most likely hypothesis is that AI will become increasingly superhuman (increase in knowledge and performance) but also increasingly less inhuman (evolution of algorithms, sense management). In the background remains the hypothesis that at some point some form of artificial consciousness may emerge that would even make it autonomous.

 

 www.avvenire.it

 

Bice - SAFE INTERNET DAY : comment protéger les enfants contre les fake news

Chaque année, le Safer Internet Day est l’occasion de souligner les dangers que l’utilisation d’internet peut représenter pour les enfants. Cette année, l’accent est mis sur les fake news : comment éduquer les enfants pour les protéger de ces informations trompeuses ?

Dans son message pour la Journée mondiale des communications sociales, le pape François a tenu à définir la fake news, « cette désinformation diffusée en ligne ou dans les médias traditionnels. » Il a rappelé l’objectif, très clair, de ces « informations non fondées, basées sur des données inexistantes ou déformées » qui visent à tromper voire à manipuler le lecteur.

Protéger les enfants contre les fake news : une mission d’éducation

Dans une analyse fine, le Pape François s’est attaché à démonter le mécanisme des fake news et leurs dangers.

• De nature mimétique, elles sont capables d’apparaître plausibles.
• Elles s’appuient sur des stéréotypes et des préjugés diffus.
• Elles font appel à des émotions immédiates, faciles à susciter, comme la peur, la colère, …
• Elles se répandent dans des environnements numériques homogènes, imperméables à des perspectives et des opinions divergentes.
  « Le drame de la désinformation », a insisté le Saint-Père, c’« est la discréditation de l’autre, sa représentation comme ennemi, jusqu’à la diabolisation susceptible d’attiser les conflits ».

Protéger les enfants contre les fake news est donc un enjeu crucial pour notre société, à l’heure où ces derniers sont de plus en plus saturés d’informations et livrés à eux-mêmes devant leurs écrans. En France, les jeunes de 13-19 ans sont déjà 81% à posséder un smartphone, 77% à avoir un compte Facebook, et 79% un compte Youtube (Etude Ipsos Junior connect 2017). Etat, enseignants, journalistes, parents : il importe à chacun de relever la mission de protection et d’éducation qui lui incombe en la matière.

Des initiatives pour promouvoir  la vérité comme instrument de paix

Le pape François a ainsi loué « les initiatives éducatives qui permettent d’apprendre à lire et à évaluer le contexte communicatif (pour) ne pas être des propagateurs inconscients de la désinformation, mais des acteurs de son dévoilement. » Le Safer Internet Day du 6 février prochain s’inscrit dans ce mouvement. Des ateliers, des animations et des conférences auront lieu dans toute la France, tout au long du mois de février, afin de protéger les enfants contre les fake news en les sensibilisant au décryptage de l’information sur la toile. Pour en savoir plus

Le Saint Père a également souligné le rôle prépondérant des journalistes qui « dans le monde contemporain, n’exercent pas seulement un métier, mais une véritable mission. (…) L’exactitude des sources, le soin de la communication sont (en effet) de véritable processus de développement du bien qui génèrent la confiance et ouvrent des voies de communion et de paix ». Cette injonction à un journalisme de paix a inspiré les 22e journées Saint François de Sales qui se sont tenues à Lourdes, du 22 au 26 janvier. Près de 300 journalistes catholiques s’y étaient réunis pour réfléchir et débattre sur le thème « Médias et vérité ».

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www.bice.org

PARA UN DIALOGO EFECTIVO - FOR AN EFFECTIVE DIALOGUE - POUR UN DIALOGUE EFFICACE

Zygmunt Bauman: “El diálogo real no es hablar con gente que piensa lo mismo que tú”.

 Por Daniel R. Esparza

El sociólogo y filósofo polaco denuncia que las redes sociales no son una comunidad sino apenas un sustituto

Bauman, nacido en Poznam en 1925, tuvo que emigrar con su familia a la entonces Unión Soviética cuando apenas era un niño, huyendo de la persecución nazi. Nuevamente, en 1968, tuvo que huir del que entonces era su país, escapando de la purga antisemita que siguió al conflicto árabe-israelí. Se radicó temporalmente en Tel Aviv, para luego terminar en Inglaterra, donde hizo carrera en la Universidad de Leeds. En una entrevista relativamente reciente (de enero de este año) con Ricardo De Querol para Babelia, en El País, explica cómo las redes sociales, si bien han cambiado en buena medida la manera las formas tradicionales del activismo social, no son sino un sustituto de la formación de auténticas comunidades.

            Ricardo De Querol inicia su pregunta a propósito de las redes sociales citando al propio Bauman, quien señala que el activismo online es “activismo de sofá”, y que la Internet las más de las veces sólo nos “adormece con entretenimiento barato”.  De Querol pregunta, así, si las redes sociales no son, parafraseando a Marx, el nuevo “opio del pueblo”. Bauman no duda en responder que la identidad, como las comunidades, no son algo que se deba crear, sino algo que “se tiene o no se tiene”.

“Lo que las redes sociales pueden crear” –señala el sociólogo- “es un sustituto. La diferencia entre la comunidad y la red es que tú perteneces a la comunidad pero la red te pertenece a ti. Puedes añadir amigos y puedes borrarlos, controlas a la gente con la que te relacionas. La gente se siente un poco mejor porque la soledad es la gran amenaza en estos tiempos de individualización. Pero en las redes es tan fácil añadir amigos o borrarlos que no necesitas habilidades sociales”.

Estas habilidades, señala Bauman en su entrevista con De Querol, se desarrollan en el contacto cotidiano humano directo, en espacios compartidos, sean públicos o privados: en la calle, en los espacios de trabajo, en los que es necesaria una interacción “razonable” con la gente; esto es, en interacciones que exigen de diálogo, negociación y de apertura.

            A propósito de ello, Bauman no duda en evocar el hecho de que el Papa Francisco concedió su primera entrevista después de haber sido electo como Sumo Pontífice a un periodista abierta y militantemente ateo, Eugenio Scalfari. “Fue una señal”, señala Bauman: “el diálogo real no es hablar con gente que piensa lo mismo que tú”.

Fuente: Aleteia

The Internet and Pornography

British Report Calls for New Measures

By Father John Flynn, LC

ROME, APRIL 27, 2012 (Zenit.org).- In England on April 16 the final report of a cross-party Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection was published. It concluded that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the government need to do more to keep children safe online.
The backbench Tory behind the study, Claire Perry, demanded that Internet providers offer parents a simple way of filtering out adult content.
"Our inquiry found that many children are easily accessing Internet pornography as well as Web sites showing extreme violence or promoting self-harm and anorexia,” she told the BBC on April 18.
The report began by praising the many benefits the Internet has, but noting that there are also downsides, ever more evident as the Internet has evolved into an “always-on” presence in our lives...

THE INTERNET AND PORNOGRAPHY

CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION 2012

Safer Internet Day: 8 February 2011

It's more than a game, it's your life
Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world.
The topic for 2011 is "our virtual lives" around the slogan " It's more than a game, it's your life".

It's more than a game, it's your life".