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I play around a bit with the so-called intelligent chatbots, such as Chat GPT, Perplexity.ai or LeChat, and I realize once again that you really shouldn't believe everything that is presented to you in black and white. What was already known about books and newspapers should not be much different with artificial intelligence.
In any case, it is sometimes really amusing what is offered to you. But since it is much more convenient than simply following boring hyperlinks on the Internet, this type of research will probably prevail among most people.
And so in the future, not only the scientific work of students, but also the conversations with most people will bring to light completely new insights — whether these have anything to do with reality or even our own existence is probably less important; we have long been making our world the way we like it (Pippi Longstocking). The more grown-up among us call this “alternative facts” (Kellyanne Conway).
Everyone has their own reality! The question remains, has it ever really been any different?
Until this question is answered, I will listen a little Jimi Hendrix, which fits the topic quite well. And his guitar playing is still undisputedly good today.
Jimi Hendrixs "Purple Haze" was published on March 17, 1967, a few days before my better half was born. I am not going to go into prenatal questions or even when people start or stop gaining their own knowledge - chatbots are already providing "suitable" answers to these questions.
Incidentally, Socrates was convinced that everyone already “knows everything” and that this knowledge could be uncovered “only” by asking the right questions (maieutics). Since Socrates is known to have left no writings, we have to rely on information from Plato and Aristophanes reliant.
With the increase in intelligent chatbots, maieutics will probably reach new heights; in the future, people will be able to conduct Socratic conversations with AI, so to speak.
However, in order for any kind of knowledge to actually be gained, the chatbot AI would have to be turned on its head, namely to the extent that the chatbots do not answer any questions at all, but on the contrary, constantly ask the user new questions and then make them more and more precise depending on the user's answers.
But here too we should not accept “42” as an answer.
“[T]he source of fear lies in the future, and he who is free from the future has nothing to fear.”
Milan Kundera, Slowness (1995: 6) — [he quotes Seneca]
