ciao Daniela,
grazie di questo richiamo a Weizenbaum.
a me pare che Baron sia ancora più radicale di Weizenbaum con la sua
domanda "Where would this world leave us humans?" (che può benissimo
essere posta a conclusione anche del passo di Weizenbaum)
dopo tempi in cui abbiamo cercato di ridurre con le macchine, ed
eliminare, la necessità di azione fisica degli umani perché ciò era
liberazione da dolore e malattie e perché la quantità di azione fisica
limitava la vita con le ore di lavoro e con il consumo precoce del
fisico; ora analogamente abbiamo un'inerzia (una spinta inerziale) che
ci porta a pensare che anche nel lavoro intellettuale sia buona cosa che
le macchie ci supportino (qui siamo sempre a Licklider e Engelbart) ma
l'inerzia va oltre e ammette che sia buona cosa che le macchine ci
sostituiscano nel lavoro intellettuale, nella produzione intellettuale.
quel che forse è peggio, trattandosi di SALAMI non sono in realtà in
grado di sostituirci, ma molti lo credono.
Baron però dice a mio avviso una cosa ancora più destabilizzante: se
anche i SALAMI non fossero salami ma autentiche intelligenze, "where
would this world leave us humans?"
"dove ci lascerebbe" è una buona metafora per sintetizzare un insieme di
domande di filosofia politica: sarebbe appropriato? sarebbe etico?
sarebbe desiderabile? sarebbe utile? e poi, per chi: per tutti per
alcuni, per pochi?
Maurizio
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2024 17:44:33 +0000
From: Daniela Tafani<daniela.taf...@unipi.it>
To: maurizio lana<maurizio.l...@uniupo.it>, NEXA ML
<nexa@server-nexa.polito.it>
Subject: Re: [nexa] sistemi di IA e scrittura
Message-ID:<9522eafc77af43599e0fc09909447...@unipi.it>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
Grazie della segnalazione, Maurizio.
Sono domande che Joseph Weizenbaum poneva, anche a proposito della comprensione
del linguaggio naturale,
in Computer power and human reason:
The second kind of computer application that ought to be avoided, or at least
not undertaken without very careful forethought,
is that which can easily be seen to have irreversible and not entirely
foreseeable side effects. If, in addition, such an application cannot
be shown to meet a pressing human need that cannot readily be met in any other
way, then it ought not to be pursued. The latter stricture
follows directly from the argument I have already presented about the scarcity
of human intelligence.
The example I wish to cite here is that of the automatic recognition of human
speech. There are now three or four major
projects in the United States devoted to enabling computers to understand human
speech, that is, to programming them in such a
way that verbal speech directed at them can be converted into the same internal
representations that would result if what had been said
to them had been typed into their consoles.
The problem, as can readily be seen, is very much more complicated than that of
natural-language understanding as such, for
in order to understand a stream of coherent speech, the language in which that
speech is rendered must be understood in the first place.
The solution of the "speech-understanding problem" therefore presupposes the
solution of the "natural-language-understanding
problem." And we have seen that, for the latter, we have only "the tiniest bit of
relevant knowledge." But I am not here concerned with
the technical feasibility of the task, nor with any estimate of just how little
or greatly optimistic we might be about its completion.
Why should we want to undertake this task at all? I have asked this question of
many enthusiasts for the project. The most cheerful
answer I have been able to get is that it will help physicians record their
medical notes and then translate these notes into action more
efficiently. Of course, anything that has any ostensible connection to medicine
is automatically considered good. But here we have to
remember that the problem is so enormous that only the largest possible
computers will ever be able to manage it. In other words,
even if the desired system were successfully designed, it would probably
require a computer so large and therefore so expensive
that only the largest and best-endowed hospitals could possibly afford it—but
in fact the whole system might be so prohibitively
expensive that even they could not afford it. The question then becomes, is
this really what medicine needs most at this time?
Would not the talent, not to mention the money and the resources it represents,
be better spent on projects that attack more urgent and
more fundamental problems of health care?
But then, this alleged justification of speech-recognition "research" is merely
a rationalization anyway. (I put the word
"research" in quotation marks because the work I am here discussing is mere
tinkering. I have no objection to serious scientists
studying the psycho-physiology of human speech recognition.) If one asks such
questions of the principal sponsor of this work, the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of
Defense, as was recently done at an open meeting,
the answer given is that the Navy hopes to control its ships, and the other
services their weapons, by voice commands. This project then
represents, in the eyes of its chief sponsor, a long step toward a fully
automated battlefield. I see no reason to advise my students to lend
their talents to that aim.
I have urged my students and colleagues to ask still another question about
this project: Granted that a speech-recognition
machine is bound to be enormously expensive, and that only governments and
possibly a very few very large corporations will
therefore be able to afford it, what will they use it for? What can it possibly
be used for? There is no question in my mind that there is
no pressing human problem that will more easily be solved because such machines
exist. But such listening machines, could they be
made, will make monitoring of voice communication very much easier than it now
is. Perhaps the only reason that there is very little
government surveillance of telephone conversations in many countries of the
world is that such surveillance takes so much
manpower. Each conversation on a tapped phone must eventually be listened to by
a human agent. But speech-recognizing machines
could delete all "uninteresting" conversations and present transcripts of only
the remaining ones to their masters. I do not for a moment
believe that we will achieve this capability within the future so clearly
visible to Newell and Simon. But I do ask, why should a talented
computer technologist lend his support to such a project? As a citizen I ask,
why should my government spend approximately 2.5
million dollars a year (as it now does) on this project?
https://archive.org/details/computerpowerhum0000weiz_v0i3/page/270
Un saluto,
Daniela
________________________________________
Da: nexa<nexa-boun...@server-nexa.polito.it> per conto di maurizio
lana<maurizio.l...@uniupo.it>
Inviato: giovedì 8 febbraio 2024 16:57
A: NEXA ML
Oggetto: [nexa] sistemi di IA e scrittura
mi sono imbattuto in questo libro:
Baron, Naomi S. Who wrote this? how AI and the lure of efficiency threaten
human writing. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2023.
nel capitolo finale l'autrice scrive:
Imagine a world where AI’s current writing challenges have been solved. Where
large language models (or their successors) don’t churn out ugliness. Where
using them is energy efficient. Where predictive texting, spellcheck, and
grammar programs are infallible. Where AI can produce lengthy texts that are
non-repetitive, stylistically interesting, factually accurate, and always on
topic. Oh, and can generate text that’s indistinguishable from what you might
have written. Where would this world leave us humans?
As we weigh options, keep in mind potential blowback of getting what we wish
for. Cultural lore—be it of King Midas in Greek mythology, the recurrent “three
wishes” stories across European tales, or W. W. Jacobs’s more modern “The
Monkey’s Paw”—reminds us that attractive prospects may bear unforeseen
consequences.
lo trovo interessante perché molta parte della riflessione critica sui sistemi
di AI si appunta su singoli aspetti mal-funzionanti/dis-funzionanti.
mentre qui c'è una riflessione critica globale, 'a prescindere', che si esprime
sui sistemi di IA ma che riguarda ogni ambito: è desiderabile/quali conseguenze
ha, che in ogni campo ogni necessità sia risolta e ogni difficoltà operativa
sia eliminata ?
"teletrasporto per tutti a costo zero" e via in cima al monte Bianco con un
tasto (in questo esempio si vede che sono proprio uno al pie' dei monti - piemontese):
che cosa mi significherebbe?
Maurizio
------------------------------------------------------------------------
la montagna è la prima che insegna a durare
antonia pozzi
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maurizio Lana
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli
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