- Both Steven Spielberg and Noam Chomsky have expressed doubts about artificial intelligence.
- Spielberg said AI would require humans to surrender creative expression and autonomy to AI.
- Chomsky is of the opinion that tools like ChatGPT “sacrifice creativity for the sake of a kind of immorality.”
Director Steven Spielberg and renowned linguist Noam Chomsky have questioned artificial intelligence and its place in the world.
Spielberg and Chomsky each gave their own views on AI’s potential to profoundly impact human creativity and independent thinking.and interview Spielberg spoke with late-night show host Steven Colbert on Wednesday about how the use of AI in the art-making process can be “very nerve-wracking.”
Spielberg told Colbert, “I like anything made by humans, not by computers.
“You’re basically giving the computer autonomy over what you’ve made, what you’ve made, what you’ve made, your point of view and yourself as a human being, and that’s why it’s so tense. Yes,” Spielberg added.
Spielberg, who directed movies like “Jaws” and “ET,” said it’s terrifying that AI has the power to take the “soul” out of creative work.
“I think the soul is something unimaginable and unspeakable,” Spielberg said. “And it cannot be created by any algorithm. It exists in all of us.”
“Because books, movies and music are written by the machines we make, do we lose it?” Spielberg added. “It scares me.”
Spielberg’s comments come after artists expressed concern that AI-powered image generators were stripping art styles to create pseudo-original works.
Linguistics professor, cognitive scientist, and philosopher Chomsky believes AI tools like ChatGPT “sacrifice creativity for the sake of a kind of immorality.”
Chomsky wrote editorial Contributed to The New York Times with Ian Roberts, professor of linguistics, and Jeffrey Watumul, director of artificial intelligence at a tech company.
In an article published Wednesday, Chomsky, Roberts, and Watumull wrote that AI systems like ChatGPT are incapable of independent thinking. They added that ChatGPT’s response shows “something like the banality of evil: plagiarism and indifference and oblivion.”
“Given the immorality, fake science, and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity,” the trio wrote.
In an email to Insider, Chomsky said he was “skeptical” that AI could help research in any field, including art and creative work.
The ethics of AI is a contentious issue, especially as chatbots like ChatGPT become more popular and widely used. But AI does not have independent thinking. Anna Marbut, a professor in the Applied Artificial Intelligence Program at the University of San Diego, told Insider’s Sherrill.
“AIs are trained for specific tasks, and they are getting better at doing specific tasks in a way that makes sense to humans,” said Marbut. “The truth is that AIs are trained on finite datasets and have finite tasks that they are very good at performing.”
Representatives for Spielberg and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
