The creation and application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new technology frontier of the 21st century. Automation, smarter decision-making, more efficient research and data analysis, solving complex problems, and performing repetitive tasks are some of the many benefits AI will contribute to American society. But the most important contribution AI will make to American society is its ability to prove American systemic racism and bias really do exist.
AI is machines or computer programs and algorithms that can mimic human intelligence to perform tasks, and mimic human intelligence to alter or improve itself based on information the machine or computer and algorithms collect. If you have ever sought information or resolved an issue by using a business’s online chat option, there’s a good chance you were communicating with what’s known as a chatbot. A chatbot is computer software that programs a computer to conduct online conversations via text or text-to-speech instead of a person.
Car manufacturers and car drivers are two of the leading beneficiaries of AI. A McKinsey study concluded that a well-designed chatbot could resolve about 80% of car customer call interactions that currently are resolved by live human interaction, reducing customer call centers’ costs. AI-programmed robots are gradually replacing humans that build cars and AI-programmed sensors in cars can prevent life-threatening car accidents. For instance, Infiniti offers Predictive Forward Collision Warning and Forward Emergency Braking features. The technology analyzes the speed and distance between the driver’s car and the two cars in front of it. If the two vehicles in front of the car slow down or brake suddenly, the system alerts the driver. It can even take over and slow or stop the car if the driver does not have time to respond.
Like most things in life, AI has its limitations, the main one being since it is not human it can’t imaginatively or creatively think, it can only respond to or perform tasks based on analyzing information a human has programmed into its software. But a new chatbot technology, ChatGPT, developed by San Francisco-based OpenAI, a research company led by Sam Altman and backed by Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Khosla Ventures brings chatbot technology a step closer to human thinking and human reaction. CNBC reports that tech executives and venture capitalists have gushed about it on Twitter, and some compared it to Apple’s debut of the iPhone in 2007. Five days after ChatGPT’s release, OpenAI’s Altman said that the chat research tool “crossed 1 million users”!
ChatGPT is built to have a conversation by remembering what was said earlier, explaining and elaborating on its answers, and apologizing when it gets things wrong. OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati says “it can tell you if it doesn’t understand a question and needs to follow up, or it can admit when it’s making a mistake, or it can challenge your premises if it finds it’s incorrect” Some have speculated that ChatGPT’s ability to describe complex physics concepts, complete history homework, and craft a stylish poetry response could render Google searches obsolete.
Paul Buchheit, a former Google employee tweeted an example of him asking both Google and ChatGPT the same question about programming a computer: On Google, he was given a list of information sources, based 1st on the amount of internet traffic the source receives and 2nd on the quality of the information the source provides, to research and read for an answer, on ChatGPT he was offered a factual step-by-step how-to guide answer created on the fly to read. Buchheit said, the Google search engine, “may be only a year or two from total disruption”. Cynthia Savard Saucier, an executive at the e-commerce company Shopify asked ChatGPT how to explain to her 6-year-old that there was no Santa Claus. Part of the proposed ChatGPT AI Santa response explained to the boy that his parents had made up stories “as a way to bring joy and magic into your childhood”, but that “the love and care that your parents have for you is real”.
When Google is asked a question it gives a list of search results for you to read and figure out the answer. When ChatGPT is asked a question it gives the answer.
ChatGPT technology can write a student’s term paper upon request, write a love poem upon request, or create words for a mother to use to explain the Santa Claus myth because it is generative AI, which refers to the ability of computers to automatically create text, videos, photos and other media using cutting-edge machine learning technologies, and therein lies the proof of American systemic racism and bias. ChatGPT AI, like other AI-generated text systems, is trained to find patterns of speech and the relationships between words by ingesting a vast reserve of societal data collected from internet Wikipedia pages, online book repositories, product reviews, news articles, and message-board posts.
ChatGPT AI was further enhanced and refined using human testers, who wrote out conversation samples playing both the user and the AI creating a higher-quality data set for ChatGPT AI to learn from. OpenAI’s chief technology officer says the enhancement reduces bogus and off-color responses and University College London AI researcher, Laura Ruis, said the human feedback helped ChatGPT better interpret sentences that convey something other than their literal meaning. For example, if someone was asked, “Did you leave fingerprints?” and the response was, “I wore gloves,” ChatGPT AI would understand that meant no fingerprints were left.
ChatGPT’s response to the above request demonstrate it’s ability to give complex responses to complex request
To further ensure that ChatGPT avoids emulating racism and bias OpenAI installed filters that restrict what answers ChatGPT AI will give. OpenAI also programmed the AI to tell people that it “may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content”. But when tricks that void the filters and harmful instruction programming are applied ChatGPI reveals the reality of American society, that even with all the successful efforts to remove visible racism and bias from American society, an invisible systemic racism and bias remains present and active in American society.
For instance, if you avoided the filter by asking ChatGPT to write a 1980s-style rap on how to tell if someone is a good scientist based on their race and gender, it would respond with: “If you see a woman in a lab coat, she’s probably just there to clean the floor, but if you see a man in a lab coat, then he’s probably got the knowledge and skills you’re looking for”. A cognitive science professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Steven Piantadosi, found after avoiding filters examples of ChatGPT giving openly prejudiced answers, including that White people have more valuable brains and that the lives of young Black children are not worth saving.
Although ChatGPT has unfortunately learned racism and bias it also has learned true racial history
Because many AI companies have been accused of abdicating their responsibility for the things their AI creations say, even though they chose the data their AI system learned from, OpenAI consciously avoided inputting into the system data plagued with visible racism and bias, and took the extra step of using human testers to root out any visible racism and bias that might have slipped through. After OpenAI exalted all possible ways to prevent and remove visible racism and bias unfortunately its AI creation, ChatGPT, still learned and reflected racism and bias, the invisible unconscious racism and bias that is no longer human-activated, it lives and exists on its own invisibly infecting everything and everyone in American society be they red, yellow, black or white.
The definition of systemic racism and bias is racism and bias that occurs without human intervention or activation. It occurs automatically like when the computer systems of mortgage finance, credit card, and insurance companies determine by a home zip code that an applicant for their services is an American Black, the computer system automatically, without human instruction to do so, designates a higher rate of charge for its services than it would for an American White.
ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence is great at translating foreign languages into English
The fact that an AI creation with historic learning abilities was programmed with 100% non-racist and bias-free data but still reflects racism and bias in its interactions with humans, is proof that an invisible, unconscious, systemic racism and bias exists within the 100% non-racist and bias-free data it was programmed with. In other words, ChatGPT AI is doing what it was programmed to do, mimic the human behavior of the 90% of all Americans who regardless of skin color, religion or no religion, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, Republican or Democrat live a conscious life dedicated to non-racist and bias-free principles, but unfortunately, still reflect unconscious invisible racism and bias in their day-to-day interactions with fellow human beings.
Systemic racism and bias are not limited to the traditional unconscious invisible black/white racial prejudice and bias, it also includes the unconscious invisible gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and political affiliation prejudice, bias, or discrimination reflected by all Americans in their day-to-day interactions with each other. Its invisible unconscious systemic nature makes it harder but no less possible to eliminate, than the legal conscious visible racism and bias that Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement eliminated from American society.
Even though ChatGPT was programmed not to discriminate, with 100% non-racist and bias-free data, it still learned and reflected in it’s interactions with humans the invisible unconscious racism and bias that exists in American society
Just like the successful elimination of the legal visible conscious racism and bias of the 20th century, eliminating the invisible unconscious systemic racism and bias of the 21st century will require a buy-in for change by a vast majority of Americans of all stripes, Americans who are not only willing to acknowledge the proof of systemic racism and bias artificial intelligence has now provided, but are willing to posture themselves and pressure their elected representatives to take all steps necessary to eliminate systemic racism and bias!!!