If you wanted results, you needed to learn the computer's language.
Large language models-the technology undergirding modern chatbots-allow users to interact with computers through natural conversation, an innovation that introduces some baggage from human-to-human exchanges.
As chatbots become a ubiquitous element of modern life and permeate many of our human-computer interactions, they have the potential to subtly reshape how we think about both computers and our fellow human beings.
One direction that these chatbots may lead us in is toward a society where we ascribe humanity to AI systems, whether abstract chatbots or more physical robots.
Chatbots are growing only more common, and there is reason to believe they will become ever more intimate parts of our lives.
More generally, chatbots will likely become the interface through which we interact with all sorts of computerized processes-an AI that responds to our style of language, every nuance of emotion, even tone of voice.
The difference is that the chatbots' natural-language interface will make them feel more humanlike-reinforced with every politeness on both sides-and we could easily miscategorize them in our minds.
Major chatbots do not yet alter how they communicate with users to satisfy their parent company's business interests, but market pressure might push things in that direction.
Generally, these recommendations result in blander, more predictable prose.
In one benign experiment, positive autocomplete suggestions led to more positive restaurant reviews, and negative autocomplete suggestions led to the reverse.
The other direction these chatbots may take us is even more disturbing: into a world where our conversations with them result in our treating our fellow human beings with the apathy, disrespect, and incivility we more typically show machines.
If chatbots truly become the dominant daily conversation partner for some people, there is an acute risk that these users will adopt a lexicon of AI commands even when talking to other humans.
The colorful aphorisms and anecdotes that give conversations their inherently human quality, but that often confound large language models, could begin to vanish from the human discourse.
AI chatbots are always there when you need them to be, for whatever you need them for.
Like a person whose only sexual experiences have been mediated by pornography or erotica, they could have unrealistic expectations of human partners.
The more ubiquitous and lifelike the chatbots become, the greater the impact could be.
More generally, AI might accelerate the disintegration of institutional and social trust.
Technologies such as Facebook were supposed to bring the world together, but in the intervening years, the public has become more and more suspicious of the people around them and less trusting of civic institutions.
In the end, LLMs may be little more than the word processor of tomorrow, a handy innovation that makes things a little easier while leaving most of our lives untouched.
Which path we take depends on how we train the chatbots of tomorrow, but it also depends on whether we invest in strengthening the bonds of civil society today.
This Cyber News was published on www.schneier.com. Publication date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 12:43:05 +0000