Futurists who are concerned that we’re gliding towards an AI-fueled dystopia in which the human race cedes its ethical, decision making, and intellectual power to a gaggle corporate algorithms can look no further than Ulf Kritersson to justify these fears.
Kristersson is the Prime Minister of Sweden and recently admitted to a Nordic news website that he often asks ChatGPT to give him a “second view” on his governance strategies.
Kristersson admitted that he uses ChatGPT quite often. During the interview“If only for a second opinion. What have other people done? Should we think the opposite? These types of questions.”
As expected, Kristersson’s comments were immediately ridiculed. Virginia Dignum, professor of responsible AI at Umea University and a professor who has interviewed the PM, said that the more he relies upon AI for simple tasks, the greater the risk of him over-relying on the system. “It’s a slippery slope. We must insist on reliability. We didn’t vote ChatGPT.”
Other outlets also criticized the PM, with all of them feeling that governance via chatbots was not an ideal route for Western civilisation. Signe Krantz of Aftonbladet wrote: “It’s too bad for Sweden that AI is mostly guessing.” “Chatbots prefer to write what they believe you want rather than what you need.”
Krantz brings up a good point: chatbots are often sycophantic. You can imagine a scenario where a leader asks a chatbot to lead questions. The software program’s algorithms would only serve to reinforce the leader’s prerogatives. ChatGPT is not used by many politicians yet.
It’s not clear whether Kristersson relies on a bot to help him with his leadership duties, or if he was just trying to appear hip by mentioning a popular tech item during an interview. But it is clear that AI has been used by many people to outsource the intellectual capabilities that, until a few short years ago, were exclusive to the human mind. This is a dangerous situation, as the tech sector has already been reducing our ability to think over the past two decades. How much dumber can we get? We’re about to find out.
