Looking at brains as if they were muscles, and ChatGPT as the kind of equalizer that guns used to be
There are two ways to look at machine intelligence. Some people believe they are the next most-advanced life form. Others will notice that planes have not replaced birds. Their purpose is different, and the forces acting on the plane’s design are different from the forces acting on bird genetics. The same goes for AI.
If machines can invent, they don’t need to learn how to write meaningful poetry. Anyone with an intelligent machine would wield it to invent solutions to life’s problems.
Brains and brawn will likely collapse into just brawn. In the same way that muscles coordinate to lift a heavy object, brain cell coordinate to build up a world model that can then generate insights. If you’re smart, you can lift heavy concepts. You might be able to slice problems, or run the idea maze better than others to get to a solution. The brain becomes a muscle for manipulating abstract concepts. Some people are lucky to be born this kind of muscle. If you’re a chimp, muscles are important. If you’re human, brains are important. But with AI, everyone could have equal access to intelligence.
Before the industrial revolution, you needed strong arms. For now, a sharp mind is useful. But once intelligence becomes commoditized, it could do to intelligence what guns did to violence. The gun is the great equalizer, and ChatGPT could be next.
If consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, we need to consider the ethics of how we treat these things. Or maybe it’s the ability to experience suffering? If that’s the case, you might be ok being rude the ChatGPT, but you’d go vegan to avoid causing animal suffering. If you believe humans are unique in that they have souls, you would be ok with eating animals, and have no problem being rude to a machine. If you’re a virtue ethicist, and you believe it’s a virtue to take good care of the the things put under your control, you wouldn’t verbally abuse your AI, but you wouldn’t believe in treating it better than a car. Keeping up with the regular maintenance of your car is a moral act.