From Dall-E, Deep Art, Copy.ai, Verse by Verse, to ChatGPT, I think we can all agree that we cannot get enough of AI! It’s fascinating, exciting, interesting, and terrifying! I keep thinking that if ChatGPT existed back when I was in college, it’d have made a lot of things easier and definitely helped with filling in some gaps. Students, nowadays, actually do use it! This begs the question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how moral is AI?
Ethical concerns
There’s a lot to go into when it comes to AI removing the barrier between ethics and innovation. On one hand, it’s helpful! On the other hand, it’s groundbreaking and fascinating to see what the human brain can come up with! This brings me to my next point and that is the origin of AI.
Origins of AI
AI wouldn’t have existed without us. Not just because we created it, but because it’s a collection of our thoughts, behavior, attitudes, and actions. ChatGPT and other AI software are trained to do specific tasks, their training is usually based on what humans have modeled for them. So, in a way, everything that AI generates is a “new” copy of what we have done before.
Plagiarism
Since ChatGPT came into existence, everyone has been using it, especially students. Its ability to write human-like answers and support them with evidence made it popular among students. The thing is the answers that ChatGPT generates are based on previous analyses and data that were written by other people. Not just that, AI might be more knowledgeable than the average person, but it’s not nearly as creative. Following this scenario, if two or more students asked ChatGPT to write an essay on the same topic, it’d generate the same answer, just with slight differences. Just look at these examples:
The difference is literally nonexistent! For one thing, using AI to write an assignment is cheating; therefore immoral. Another thing is that the generated answers would make it abundantly clear that it’s plagiarized, which is academic suicide! And it completely kills originality and deprives us of creating and providing a new perspective.
Bias & discrimination
Just like we have our biases, AI also has its own. Most of the time, if not all, it’s also our biases because AI feeds off of us. Depending on its training, AI can form biases and discriminate against some groups. This will be reflected in its answers, predictions, and decisions. The algorithm can be manipulated to lead to an unfair outcome by excluding certain groups.
Just think in the last years (and even now), some apps like Instagram and Facebook’s algorithms have been deliberately deleting, banning, and shadowing anyone who posts about Palestine. This is just one example of its bias which need to be reformed, but at the same time, we need to check our biases first!
So… ethics?
In the end, it’s up to us to use AI wisely and correctly. The AI is a mere reflection of ourselves, so if we use it to cheat, steal, or you know do anything immoral, that’s on us, not AI.
