Still following the previous post of June 27th (link above) about the very intelligent comment made by a (Portuguese) Professor at the University of Washington, concerning the biggest risk of artificial intelligence which is not having enough intelligence—it's worth noting that the latest issue of The Economist (page 54) stated that "GPT-4 already exhibits a degree of consciousness".
Given the aforementioned context, it makes perfect sense to disclose the fact that yesterday, a paper titled "ChatGPT and the rise of semi-humans" was published here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-02154-3#Sec6 This paper delves into the important research question: "What are ChatGPT’s human-like traits as perceived by society?". The very notion of “semi-humans” illustrates how rapidly the discussion is moving beyond the technical capabilities of AI towards questions traditionally belonging to philosophy, psychology and the study of human identity.
One detail in the paper's bibliography was particularly striking: among the works cited is Theodore Kaczynski's 1995 Industrial Society and Its Future, better known as the Unabomber manifesto. The reference is certainly unusual, but perhaps not entirely accidental. Long before contemporary artificial intelligence, Kaczynski's text articulated an extreme and deeply problematic version of a recurring fear: that technological systems may progressively acquire a logic and momentum of their own, leaving human beings increasingly dependent upon structures they created but can no longer fully control.
The irony is difficult to miss. In 1995, such fears belonged largely to the margins of technological debate. Less than three decades later, questions about human autonomy, technological dependence, machine intelligence and even machine consciousness have entered mainstream scientific and public discussion. The interesting question is therefore not whether Kaczynski was right his conclusions and methods were indefensible but why some of the questions surrounding technological power have proved so persistent.
Kaczynski, TJ (1995) Unabomber manifesto: Industrial society and its future. The Washington Post, Washington, DC. http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/ethics/Unabomber.pdf