Criticism to the Prime Minister of Sweden for Admitting to Using Chat GPT to Aid in Decision-Making
Futurists are worried that the world is heading towards a dystopia fueled by AI, where the human race surrenders its ethics, decision-making, and intellectual power to a number of corporate algorithms. They could find proof in Ulf Kristersson to justify their fears.
Kristersson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, recently admitted to a Nordic news site that he sometimes seeks a “second opinion” from Chat GPT when it comes to governance strategies.
“I use it quite frequently,” Kristersson said. “Even if it’s just for a second opinion, to see what others have done, and if it would be better to do the complete opposite. For that kind of things.”
Reactions and Concerns about AI-assisted Governance
As expected, immediate criticisms poured in. “The more you rely on AI for simple things, the greater the risk of relying too much on the system,” said Virginia Dignum, a professor of artificial intelligence at Umeå University, on the same news site. “It’s a slippery slope. We have to demand guaranteed reliability. We don’t vote for Chat GPT.”
Other news sites also criticized the Prime Minister, and everyone felt that governance via chatbot was not the ideal route for Western civilization. “It’s bad for Sweden that AI mostly guesses,” wrote Signe Krantz from Aftonbladet. “Chatbots write what they think you want to read, not what you need to do.” Krantz is right because chatbots are often deceitful and sycophantic. If a leader asks a chatbot questions that lead to a predetermined response, imagine a situation where the software algorithms only serve to reinforce what that leader already thinks (or push them further into the unknown). The good news is that there don’t seem to be many politicians who feel they need Chat GPT’s advice to guide them.
Whether Kristersson truly depends on and trusts a chatbot while fulfilling his duties as a leader, or if he was just trying to seem cool by mentioning that he uses a popular technology product in his interview, what is clear is that more and more people are using AI to outsource intellectual capabilities that until a few years ago were the exclusive domain of the human mind. It is a dangerous situation as the tech industry has been working for two decades to atrophy our ability to think. How much dumber can we get? I guess we’ll find out at some point.
