The totalitarianization of society

At first sight, programs like OpenAI, with its sections ChatGPT for making texts and DALL.E for making images, seem a step forward in human development, despite all criticism you can make against them. Maybe the present shortcomings of such programs will only be temporary and once its flaws have been improved, they will be powerful tools for making life better. Boring text writing tasks, for example, can be left to machines, and humans will get more freedom for real creativity. That is possible, indeed. Many technical developments have made life better. On the other hand, there is also a dark site of this new technology, as we saw in my last blogs, when I talked of a Big Brother Society in this respect. Technical developments can bring more welfare, but they can also lead to more control over society by a small number of rulers. It can lead to a totalitarianization of society. Why? Let me start with a historical perspective.
Originally, dictatorships were personal. It was about personal power, wealth and honour. Some people (usually men) tried to get leadership positions, preferably be head of state, for so they could amass wealth, exercise power and be honoured. Power and honour gave the possibility to become wealthy but were also valued as such. In the end, there was no other way to control people than by violence and by creating dependency relations, but so long as “the people” did what a ruler said, it was okay. Note that dictators can exist at all levels. They don’t need to be heads of state, but also a local boss, dependent on someone above him, can be a dictator, albeit locally. However, by violence and dependency structures, maybe you can make that people behave the way you like, but in fact you cannot control their private lives. As long as people pay their taxes and say “you are great”, it’s difficult to get a real grip on them. Especially, dictators of this type can’t control ideas. Ideas can be dangerous, since they can undermine authority and power structures. It was not without reason that Galileo was forced to say that that the sun revolves around the earth although he believed that the earth revolves around the sun, for the latter idea undermined the authority and so the power of the roman-catholic church (or so it believed).
This changed with the invention of printing. Now ideas could be quickly and widely distributed with the help of books. So, it became easier to undermine dictatorships. It is no surprise that many books were forbidden by dictators. This had two effects: Dangerous ideas were stopped and ideas positive about the dictator still could be widely spread. However, the distribution of dangerous books could not be effectively stopped. In addition, other new developments influenced the distribution of ideas. I’ll only mention them here:
- The rise of education for everybody during the ages; first only primary education but later also higher education.
- New means of transport: Trains, then cars, then aeroplanes.
- The invention of radio and TV.
- The invention of the computer and then the internet.
These are only the most important developments, but they all had, step by step, important effects. Ideas could be distributed in an easier way, but also life became better. On the other hand, humans became more dependent on their new way of life. The backside was that there came also new ways of control, with the result that a new type of dictatorship came into being: the totalitarian dictatorship. While in the old types of dictatorships in essence it was enough that the subjects did what the dictators ordered them to do, totalitarian dictatorships try to control everything in society including what the subjects think. The first completely totalitarian state was the Soviet Union. Everything was in the hands of this state (or so it tried): education, mass media, transport, culture, organisations of all kinds (including sports clubs, theatre, etc.). The whole society was completely controlled by the state, although it appeared often difficult to control the ideas, for ideas from abroad still trickled in. But not only “official” dictatorial states became totalitarian, also democratic states got totalitarian traits.
It is in this in historical perspective that we must see the development of programs like OpenAI. My historical description could only be sketchy, but I think that you see the point: Through the ages, especially since the 15th century, rulers have got increasingly a grip on what their subjects do. More and more leaders got the means to control their subjects. Originally dictators could enforce only the right behaviour but gradually they could also enforce the right ideas. By influencing the ideas, dictators tried to force people to think in the right way. And here it is that chatbots can help dictators. For till now, people still had to think themselves with the help of the enforced ideas. But now there is a machine that thinks for you: Just give the chatbot a hint, and you can stop thinking, for the chatbot tells you what you think. The perfect chatbot will be the one that you need to give only one order: “Tell me what I think” and the chatbot will tell you. That’s the ultimate control of thinking! The ultimate? No, the ultimate control of thinking is a machine that fully thinks for you: You don’t need to ask it any longer “What do I think?” It just thinks for you. The machine is you.

Random quote
Love is a biological necessity, but it doesn't have to be the love for a living being that is now with you. You can also feel love for nature, or for a hobby.

Stephanie Cacioppo (1974-)

The dangers of ChatGPT

Big Brother style van Gogh according to DALL.E (OpenAI) 

The new chatbot of OpenAI, ChatGPT, has dazzled the world with its ability to write texts (and to make images as well). More and more students use it for making their assignments. Schools and universities hit back with special software in order to detect artificially written texts, since they are seen as fraud. Some Australian universities have even decided that students must write their exams again with paper and pencil instead of with a computer. Artificial Intelligence may make life easier, but it has also brought a new kind of fraud in the world.
Anyway, when you ask a chatbot like ChatGPT to write a text about a certain theme, the program uses information, which it gets from a kind of inner library or by searching the Internet, or however. How it does this is not important here, but the fact that it does, makes that ChatGPT and other chatbots – but let me concentrate here on ChatGPT – function as search engines. That may be nice for the users, but not so for Google, which fears to lose one of its main tasks and so a source of income, if others take over their job. This can really happen, for Microsoft thinks already about investing another ten billion [10,000 million] dollars in OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT. It could lead to the development of ChatGPT into a kind of search engine. The difference with a traditional search engine is that a traditional search engine like Google presents a list of websites where you can find the information you are looking for, while a ChatGPT-like search engine produces a text that is a kind of summary of the contents of such a list of websites (or whatever sources have been used).
At first sight, search-engines-new-style seem to be an interesting improvement of the search-engines-old-style. Indeed, it saves you a lot of work and you get a text that you can directly copy and paste in the text that you are writing. Nevertheless, I think that it is a dangerous development, full of pitfalls and big-brother-like consequences. As we saw in my blog last week, at least the present state of ChatGPT (or OpenAI) is such that the texts it produces are not reliable and can be full of incorrect information. I asked the program four times to write about me and my philosophy and I got four substantially different texts, and most in these texts was false. But how were these texts produced? I have no idea, since there were no quotations of sources. I must either take the texts as they are or do as yet my own research (but why then use ChatGPT?). I am afraid that most people will take a text written by ChatGPT as it is and will, for example, believe that there has been a philosopher Henk bij de Weg (1919-1991), who was once a professor at the University of Amsterdam; a person that never existed (see my blog last week).
However, even if ChatGPT would give the sources – and some other chatbots do –, how do we know why it has selected just these sources? What are the algorithms behind the texts? As said, in my last blog I asked four times more or less the same question and I got four different answers. How is that possible? Moreover, everybody knows that there are many websites on the Internet with false or fake information. Sometimes this information is incorrect by mistake; in other cases websites have purposefully been made in order to spread false information. How can an algorithm know whether the content of a website is false or true, fake or fact?
Then I want to mention yet a third point. A ChatGPT-like text writing program can be a dangerous instrument in the hands of a manipulator. It can be a useful instrument for a Big Brother in an Orwellian world, when developed as a text writing search engine in the sense just discussed. Look, for instance, at what is happening in a dictatorship like Russia, where fake facts are produced and spread by the official media. A search-engine-new-style would be an important extra tool for a dictatorship. It would also make it easier to change the facts and to rewrite history. Orwell writes in his novel 1984 how official history is continuously rewritten in order to fit new political developments. We see this happen also in dictatorships like Russia and China. However, also in more or less democratic societies this can happen. Chatbots are owned by private companies that have interests of their own. Sources with unwelcome information may not be considered, when search engines produce texts. Worse is that only or especially information is used that promote the interests of a company. If this happens – and when you look around, you can see that such things often happen – a search engine is no longer a reliable tool but it has become an instrument for manipulation.
Much more can be said about the dangers of ChatGPT-like search engines. On the Internet a lively discussion is going on about this question. The essence of the problem is that such search engines can easily generate biased, false and misleading information that is seen as correct information by its users. For why check it, if it looks true at first sight? Why not believe that there has been a philosopher Henk bij de Weg (1919-1991), who was once a professor at the University of Amsterdam, if ChatGPT says so? ChatGPT can develop into a handy instrument for writing reliable texts, but there is still a long way to go before we’ll be that far. And it is certainly not unthinkable that the development of ChatGPT-like search engines will be another step on the road to a Big Brother Society. 

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The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

The facts according to OpenAI

Since the introduction of the Internet, teachers and university professors complain that their students copy and paste text from web pages for their study assignments. Therefore, teachers and professors often use special software for detecting this kind of fraud. Since the recent introduction of OpenAI it is to be expected that this problem will grow, for this program can even write complete texts after you have given it some hints what to write about. As I showed in a blog last month, these texts are often not bad and can be used as the basis for a simple essay, an article or a blog. Nonetheless, after having read more about OpenAI I am not convinced anymore that this program can produce reliable texts, if the theme you want to write about is a bit complicated or if, for instance, the text must contain important advices or other content that, if not true, can have harmful effects. Therefore, I wanted to examine whether OpenAI doesn’t only produce readable texts, but whether these texts are also reliable.
Suppose you are a high school student and for a philosophy lesson you have to write a text about a philosopher of your choice. You decide to write about Henk bij de Weg (that’s me). There is no Wikipedia page about Henk bij de Weg or other summary information about him on the internet. But then the student thinks: “Let OpenAI write about it. It gives me the info I need and at the same time it produces a complete text”. So the student asked the program to write a text about Henk bij de Weg’s philosophy. This is what s/he got:

“Henk bij de Weg is a Dutch philosopher and professor in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on the relationship between knowledge, truth and ethics. He is best known for his book Ethics and Truth from 2007, in which he examines the relationship between these two themes. Henk bij de Weg’s philosophy is based on the idea that knowledge and truth are inextricably linked. In his book he states that knowledge and truth are two sides of the same coin. He states that knowledge cannot exist without truth, and vice versa. According to the philosopher, the truth is more than just a fact or a theory. It is a concept that goes beyond science.”

To be brief, what OpenAI has produced here about me is completely false. The only true statement in this text is that I am a Dutch philosopher. The rest is nonsense. I have written several books and a range of articles, but I did NOT write a book titled Ethics and Truth; I have not written about the relationship between knowledge, truth and ethics; etc. My main philosophical interest has always been the philosophy of mind and action and I have, among other things, written about the method of understanding, collective intentionality, Montaigne and nonviolence (see my website).

But everybody needs a second chance, so also OpenAI. Now I asked it to write about the philosopher Henk bij de Weg. This is what I got:

“Henk bij de Weg is a Dutch philosopher known for his work on the philosophy of life. He specializes in the philosophy of history, morality, politics, culture and aesthetics. Henk graduated from the University of Amsterdam with a doctorate in philosophy. He also worked as a teacher at the same university. He also worked as a lecturer at the University of Leiden, the Academy of Fine Art and the University of Utrecht. Henk has written several books and published many articles. He is a leading voice in Dutch philosophy and has had many well-known students, including…”

Again, all this is nonsense. I am not interested in the philosophy of life. I graduated as a sociologist from the Utrecht University, although it’s true that I got my PhD in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. The rest is COMPLETELY FALSE. I never had these jobs. I haven’t worked there, with the exception of a short research job at the Utrecht University. I am probably unknown in the world of the Dutch philosophy and I had no students. If I am known a little bit in the Netherlands it is as a photographer.

But since everybody needs more than two chances, I tested OpenAI again a few times. I’ll save you the details, but in one text I was described as “a leader in the field of moral philosophy. He is best known for his views on the ethical implications of technology and the implications of modernity on our daily lives.” Hadn’t OpenAI told me in another text that I was known for my work on the philosophy of life? But also this text is nonsense, since I haven’t written about the ethical implications of technology, etc. However, the worst I got is this, when I asked OpenAI to write a text about the philosopher Henk bij de Weg:
“Henk bij de Weg (1919-1991) was a Dutch philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.” I can assure you that there has NEVER been such a person. My family name is unique in the world and in 1919 the number of persons with this family name (the b written either with a small letter or a capital letter) was very small. Probably I am the only person in the world with the name Henk bij de Weg who ever lived.

Should I say more about the value of OpenAI, when you ask it to write a text about a certain theme and this text contains factual information? In view of my experiences, I think this value can best be summarized by paraphrasing a quote from an unknown person: “There are three kinds of lies: There are lies, damned lies, and OpenAI.”

Random quote
The equality of rights proclaimed at the end of the eighteenth century is above all equality among white men, and especially among white male owners.

Thomas Piketty (1971-)

Types of intelligence

Everyone knows it: the intelligence test or IQ test. You do the test, which is quite complicated, however, and then you get a score: The Intelligence Quotient or IQ. An IQ of 100 is an average score, so if your score is more than 100, you are more intelligent than average, and 125 is already a very good result. If your score is below 100, you are less intelligent than average and an IQ of 80 is already quite low. Simple, isn’t it? Everybody a score and we know his or her abilities. Really? Psychologists knew already that it’s not that simple. For example, what exactly is intelligence? Isn’t it culture-dependent? Isn’t intelligence a multiple concept? The developmental psychologist Howard Gardner was the first to find out that there is no intelligence as such, but that there are several types of intelligence, and that you can be more intelligent in one way and less in another respect. Every combination of intelligence types is possible and so are your abilities. You can be a good reasoner but a bad mathematician. You can be a very good carpenter but cannot explain what you are exactly doing. It’s wrong to identify intelligence with mathematical cognitive capabilities, as always had been done. Each type of intelligence has a value of its own.

Gardner distinguished first seven and then eight types of intelligence, and maybe there is a ninth type as well. Here they are (for more extensive descriptions, see Sources below):

Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence
Characteristics: Good body and mind coordination; good sense of timing; good fine and gross motor skills.
Examples: Athletes, dancers, soldiers, builders, and doctors.

Interpersonal Intelligence
Characteristics: High degree of interpersonal intelligence; good at interacting with other persons. Easily understanding people and social situations. Easily picking up personal and social signals and good at going along with people and in social situations and at adapting to them. Enjoying cooperation with others and discussions.
Examples: Teachers, psychologists, social workers, politicians, salespersons.

Intrapersonal Intelligence
Characteristics: Ability to understand oneself; being aware of own’s feelings, thoughts and emotions, and understanding why one has them. Good at predicting one’s reactions in different situations. So one knows one weaknesses and strengths, which helps to make plans and achieve goals.
Examples: psychologists, writers, therapists, counsellors, social workers, theologians, entrepreneurs, poets.

Linguistic Intelligence
Characteristics: Ability to use words effectively; to use the right words and to express well what you mean. This can but does not need not include the ability easily to learn another language.
Examples: Writers, journalists, lawyers, public speakers, TV hosts.

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
Characteristics: Good in cognitive skills such as critical, logical and abstract thinking, reasoning, problem-solving skills; the ability to understand and express systems and elements through numbers.
Examples: Mathematicians, logicians, economists, accountant, scientist, computer analysts.

Musical Intelligence
Characteristics: Sensitive to sounds, rhythms, tones, melodies, timbres, and pitches. Can easily memorize tunes and rhythms and detect subtle noises and sounds that others may not even be able to hear.
Examples: Singer, musicians, composers, music teachers, conductors, dancers.

Visual-Spatial Intelligence
Characteristics: Capacity to think in spatial relations and images and consider things in three dimensions; ability to mentally move and shift 3D images and to perceive different perspectives.
Examples; Architects, designers, photographers, cartographers, pilots.

Naturalist Intelligence (originally not included by Gardner in his typology)
Characteristics: Sensitivity to the environment and changes in nature.
Examples: Farmers, gardeners, hunters, biological scientists, astronomers, meteorologists, geologists, landscape architects.

Existential Intelligence (Gardner’s possible ninth type)
Characteristics: Ability to handle deep questions such as the meaning of existence; being highly sensitive on matters related to human existence; being comfortable talking about serious questions and also striving to find answers.
Examples: Writers, theologians, philosophers, economists, bloggers.

Actually, we knew already from practice that there are people who are cognitively intelligent and people who are practically intelligent: There are thinkers and doers. As Gardner’s investigations have made clear, the situation is more complicated. “Intelligence” is a multifaceted, multiple and multidimensional concept. In fact, there are no smart people and stupid people. Everyone is good at one thing and less good at something else and maybe very bad at a third thing. But because intelligence has many variations, we are usually good at at least one thing.
Do you want to know what your strong and weak points are? There are several tests on the internet that measure your multiple intelligence, for example here and here. Such a test is an easy way to find out your intelligence type, unless you are intrapersonal-intelligent, for, of course, then you should know it already.

Sources
- Howard Gardner, Frames of the Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Free download here.
- “The 8 Types of intelligence”
- Nord Anglia, “What are the nine types of intelligence that should be considered in all school curricula?”

Random quote
Each of us can see that our worldly being is very different from the one we are at our core.

Guillaume Martin (1993-)

The Parable Of The Old Man And The Young

War memorial shaped like an altar in Sainte-Marie-à-Py (dep. Marne, France) for
commemorating the civilian and military residents who died in both World Wars

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was the most famous British war poet. As I have written in a recent blog, he was killed in action, on 4 November 1918, one week before the end of the First World War, in Ors (Nord department) in Northern France. (see my blog dated 5 August 2022 and the next one) Owen’s poems on the First World War apply in many cases to the present Ukraine-Russia War as well. Therefore, now and then I have quoted and will quote one of his war poems.

The Parable Of The Old Man And The Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,

And builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.

When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him, thy son.

Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,

A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen

Notes

- The lines 1-14 follow the wording of Genesis 22:1-19 very closely.
- line 7: belts and straps: As of a soldier’s equipment.

Source
- For the poem https://allpoetry.com/Wilfred-Owen
- For the notes Jon Stallwortby (ed.), The Poems of Wilfred Owen. London: Chatto & Windus, 1990: p. 151