The Limitations of ChatGPT

by Madeleine Kando

I have a thought, which I want to convey to my Dutch friend. English is my language of choice, but then he asks me to say it in Dutch. I grew up in Holland, so you would think it wouldn't be such a difficult task. I find myself grappling for words, trying to construct logical sentences that mirror what I think. I feel like an arthritic contortionist. It doesn't meet my expectations but that's the best I can do. 'I could say this a lot better in English, you know' I tell him.

The same goes for French, another language I grew up with. French sounds melodious and the way it is constructed has a poetic aura about it as if a bunch of poets sat down and selected the most pleasant-sounding bits of human speech to form the French language. (German, tragically, suffers from an abundance of harsh phonemes, as if they were forged by a group of rough warriors who made their enemies run for cover, every time they opened their mouth). But is language the best conduit for the multi-dimensionality of our mental world? I have to transpose something that is happening on multiple levels into one linear dimension. A thought is not just verbal; it has colors, shape, smell, taste, speed and much more.

Wouldn’t it be truer to reality if we had a means of communication that includes all these dimensions in one package? True, we have art, music, dance and mathematics to convey these other dimensions of thought, but doesn’t their own range also limit those? Can I do justice to quantum mechanics when I express it in music? Can I express the beauty of a sunrise using mathematics?

The current rage is all about chatbots and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can have a conversation with a user in natural language. They can also debug computer programs, compose music, generate business ideas and play games.

But isn’t AI forcing our way of thinking into a one-dimensional ‘verbal’ groove? What about the other major component of communication, i.e. the nonverbal part? There is body language, facial expressions and the tone of your voice, the melody of language, the pauses, hesitations and intonations. All of these contain a huge amount of information, which can drastically alter the verbal content of what is said. If we become enamored with the simplicity and one-dimensionality of chatbots (the spoken word), much of our humanness is at risk of disappearing.

A much better idea would be to roll our many forms of expression into one super-language. This reminds me of ‘More than Human’, a science fiction story by Theodore Sturgeon. Even though Sturgeon’s story is about several ‘freaks’ (with telepathic, telekinetic and superhuman intelligence) that join forces to create a ‘Gestalt’, i.e. the next evolutionary step in mankind, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to artificially create a ‘super-language’ that would do more justice to our multi-dimensional ability to form thoughts.

On the other hand, although language might not be the best tool to replicate our ‘mentalese’ as cognitive scientists like to call it, it does have the advantage of sifting out unnecessary and redundant information. It wouldn’t be practical, to have a form of communication that mirrors every single aspect of what we are thinking. It would resemble a ‘stream of consciousness’ scenario, to the point where nobody would make head or tail out of what is being said. Although famous writers have used ‘stream of consciousness’ in their writing superbly, to mere mortals like the rest of us, it would be like stepping into a mud-hole.

Language is a natural bi-product of what scientists call the 'cognitive niche', which is the ability to ‘anticipate’ so that you can defeat the fixed defenses of other organisms. If we didn’t have language we wouldn’t be able to take advantage of our intelligence and our niche wouldn’t be a niche at all, it would be a snare. Language allows you to transfer information very cheaply: if I teach you how to fish, it doesn’t mean that I give up any of the fish I have caught. I duplicate what I have, the knowledge of fishing, at no cost to me. It helps us survive as a species.

Aside from chatbbots shaving off many aspects of human communication, like a hairdresser who cannot stop cutting your hair until you resemble a marine sergeant, it might also accelerate the exponential disappearance of many languages. ChatGPT boasts to support more than 50 languages. But there are more than 7,000 languages in the world. What will happen to the 6,950 languages that chatbots don’t support?

Where languages really thrive is at the point where one language meets another. That’s where mixed breeds get created. If a language is too isolated, either by natural causes or artificially (like the Academie Française is trying to do with French), it atrophies.

English is already the Lingua Franca of the world, but most people who speak English, speak it as a second language. Just like me, they are not native speakers of English. If all these multi-linguals fall prey to the chatbot craze, they will no longer communicate in their native language with their children. You might say that it is the survival of the fittest in the language world, but chatbot are not a natural phenomenon. The survival bs doesn’t work here.

For better or for worse, my mentalese has jumped from Dutch to English. With all the different languages I grew up with: Hungarian, French, Dutch and now English, you now know why my Dutch friend has to put up with my choice of language. leave comment here