Who is more human, you or AI? ChatGPT makes us rethink human nature

A few weeks ago, I received a small quiz from a friend. The quiz itself provided 20 photos of cosplay players, and the testee had to identify which of these 20 photos were generated by AI and which were It's live action.

In order to better understand AI and avoid the reality of the conspiracy of "Skynet" ruling mankind in sci-fi movies, I decided to search the Internet for the weaknesses of AI-generated portraits. Sure enough, netizens from all over the world have sorted out some details that AI is not good at, such as difficulty in grasping fingers, sometimes increasing or decreasing the number of fingers; poor understanding of the posture and expression of "falling", etc. I was so determined at the moment, I always felt that following these guidelines and my superb sensitivity to "people", I would be able to find real girls in all the photos and not be confused by AI.

I'm not the only one with a win-lose complex about artificial intelligence. Brian, a computer engineer and poet. Christine is a good example. In 2009, Brian was invited to participate in the Robner Award competition designed according to the Turing test. He competed with the AI dialogue program and tried to interact with pure text within 5 minutes. Convince the judges that he is a real person.

Over the years, the organizers have often given ironic advice to human contestants: "You are human, just be yourself." Brian ignored this sentence at all. In order to defend his identity as a human being in the competition, he deeply explored different fields such as philosophy, programming language, and IQ dialogue, hoping to find out a way to guarantee victory in this competition, and wrote these thoughts into "Contest of Human Nature" "This book.

On the surface, it seems that this book originated from the confrontation between AI and human beings in the Turing test, but Brian is very clear that, like all breakthrough technological developments in history, the crux of the problem has always been human beings themselves. Human beings are strangers to themselves. We advocate rationality, shape the appearance of the environment through logical thinking, we use fire, invent tools, create different cultures around the world, and find ways to distinguish ourselves from the nature around us, and even try to follow our own understanding of ourselves Create. When Pandora's box was opened, AI has mastered deductive skills, inductive and logical abilities and gradually caught up with us, as if the rationality we most admire is not worth mentioning.

Looking back, I found that those elements that humans once thought were unique have long since been eliminated under new scientific observations: many primates are as good at using tools as we are, and killer whale populations around the world also have different cultures , and even certain birds of prey are "known to use fire." At such a juncture, perhaps what we should really worry about is not the progress of AI, but how to fully understand our own "human nature"?

While reading "The Contest of Human Nature", a piece of news came to mind. Taipei MRT City Hall Station is always crowded with people every New Year’s Eve. According to statistics, the total number of people entering and leaving the station often exceeds 200,000. One time, seeing the restlessness of the people waiting to enter the station, the station staff took out a loudspeaker and played brain teasers with the people, winning applause from all the halls.

If it is simply to plan the most ideal exit line under the existing conditions, I think the ability of AI should be able to surpass the station staff. But it may not be so easy to be as keenly aware of the emotions of the crowd as this station attendant is, stand on the front line at the right time, and respond in a humorous way. Such a performance undoubtedly shows the depth of human nature: we can not only think objectively, but also feel subjectively. Perhaps it is precisely because of the imperfect integration of these two often diametrically opposed elements that human behavior and choices are so complex and unreasonable. These "out of line" things are just proof that we are born as human beings.

At the 2009 Robner Awards, Brian. Through these profound thoughts, Christine finally successfully demonstrated her humanity and won the title of "Most Human-like Human" among many contestants. Now in 2023, ChatGPT has passed the Turing test in February. Does this mean that the end of science fiction movies is coming? Bryan has also anticipated this day in "The Contest of Human Nature": "I think the Turing test in the next year is worth watching, because it is the moment for us humans to fight back, the moment for us to fight back after we are put to death. We That's when we'll know how to be a better friend, artist, teacher, parent, or lover. That's the moment when we become more human than ever before, and we'll return to our glory. That's the moment I look forward to being in full bloom ".