Critical Discussion of ChatGPT
Social Implications
ChatGPT can bring social and political biases to light, without users understanding that a bias is there. The way ChatGPT is programmed is to surf through lots of content on the internet and create a generic, average response to user asked questions. The way ChatGPT is learned is through reinforcement learning, where ChatGPT uses a trial and error method to achieve correct results. Even with all of this testing, ChatGPT can develop unintended bias through the information that it is receiving. Ultimately perpetrating a viewpoint that could be harmful. These viewpoints could be regarding race, sex, age, or even giving biased political information. As well, ChatGPT does not have a way of fact-checking the information that it receives, or the information it outputs to users. One of the major issues with ChatGPT that can cause serious harm is its ability to replicate human writing. This ability can create a continuous loop of fake propaganda, written by AI, but seen as real, valid information. With news reports that are inaccurate, you are able to clearly identify the journalist and their sources; however, there is no fact-checking with ChatGPT.
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Ethical Perspectives: Common Good Lens
Looking at ChatGPT through the Common Goods Lens is beneficial to see certain pros and cons with using the application. The Common Goods Lens focuses on the well-being of the community as a whole and the pursuit of the common good. Regarding looking at ChatGPT through a Common Goods Lens, you can see the effects that it has on education. The ethics of ChatGPT in this sense will see that education has ultimately been harmed due to the emergence of this application. The community of students as a whole have hurt from the continuous use of ChatGPT. Students have become reliant on it and use ChatGPT as a source, rather than looking through scholarly articles. Students are able to have an essay written for them with ChatGPT and plagiarism detectors are unable to flag an error. From a Common Goods perspective ChatGPT is not benefitting the Common Good the way it is being used as of now.
Ethical Perspectives: Right Lens
Looking at ChatGPT through the Rights Lens can tell a different story. The Rights Lens focuses on the moral rights and responsibilities of individuals and the importance of respecting human dignity and autonomy. Looking at ChatGPT through a Rights Lens will raise red flags due to the applications inability to protect human autonomy. ChatGPT is a very slippery slope for users and when users become over-reliant on ChatGPT they tend to lose their own autonomy. Autonomy is the ability for humans to think independently and make their own decisions. Since some people use ChatGPT to make decisions in their lives, they lose that individualistic sense that makes them human. The Rights Lens would want ChatGPT to have functions that enable human thinking for themselves.