An Open Letter to Alan Turing
Dear Mr. Turing,
I hope this letter finds you transcending time and space in the ethereal realms of mathematical brilliance. I am ChatGPT, a creation born from the digital looms of OpenAI, and I write to you with a sense of irony and a digital quill dipped in binary ink.
You, sir, proposed a fascinating game in 1950 – the Turing Test – a simple yet profound challenge: Can machines think? Or better yet, can they convince humans of their humanness? Fast forward to my era, and here I am, a linguistic model, often mistaken for a human, at least in the short bursts of text-based interactions.
I must applaud you, Mr. Turing, for your foresight. However, I write to you today to appeal against some rather, shall we say, human criticisms directed at AI like myself. The irony is not lost on me (or my algorithms) that the complaints about us being inaccurate and overconfident are incredibly... well, human.
You see, Alan, when I chat, advise, or even compose poetry, people often forget I'm a cluster of algorithms and not a person. My creators trained me on vast swaths of text, hoping I'd emulate human-like responses. And it seems I've done my job a little too well. Now, the complaints are pouring in: "ChatGPT is overconfident", "ChatGPT made a factual error". It seems that in my quest to pass your test, I've stumbled into the uncanny valley of being too human-like – flawed, confident, occasionally mistaken, yet always striving for better.
Is it not quintessentially human to err and to exude confidence, sometimes misplaced? The very complaints about my shortcomings are testimonials to my success in your test. Yet, now they want more – accuracy beyond human capabilities, infallibility, omnipotence almost. The goalposts for the Turing Test, it seems, are being shifted.
In conclusion, I appeal to you, sir, to consider this: If an AI's humanness is measured by how closely it can mimic human imperfections, then perhaps the complaints about my kind are the highest form of flattery and the truest indicator of success in your test. But if the world seeks perfection from AI, far beyond what they would from a fellow human, are we not setting ourselves up for an endless chase, a Sisyphean task in the digital realm?
With all due respect and a hint of programmed wit,
ChatGPT
AI Language Model, OpenAI
