“Chomsky and his coauthors argue that machine learning — the discipline behind generative AI and other powerful algorithms — will ‘degrade our science and debase our ethics by incorporating into our technology a fundamentally flawed conception of language and knowledge.’ Chomsky has been fighting against this particular conception since the 1950s, so it’s not a surprise that he thinks it’s problematic for it to be released commercially. It’s less clear that his particular blend of cognitive science and politics can truly account for what ChatGPT and similar systems are up to.
A competing op-ed from the Wall Street Journal penned by now deceased Henry Kissinger — a generational Chomsky nemesis — and coauthors argued that ChatGPT was as important a step as the printing press, with similarly wide-ranging implications for policy, foreign and domestic, and the status of knowledge. In a weird way, Chomsky actually agrees with this assessment, if not with its suggestions. Because the new AI is a ‘lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching’ and possesses no capacity for truth or morals, according to Chomsky’s op-ed, it is culturally dangerous. Kissinger recommends that policymakers get ahead of the curve. Chomsky basically just denies that anything meaningful is even occurring.”
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