When I was a university student, the only way to do research was to go to the National Diet Library and make copies of technical books (I had to split the trip into two days because I could only do half due to copyright restrictions) or spend a day looking for books at a used bookstore in Kanda. Now that I think about it, I feel that my intellectual capacity was enhanced more by these side trips than by searching….

The Internet and Google made research easy, and Q&A sites such as Yahoo Chiebukuro were also helpful.

And now we have ChatGPT. It has saved me a great deal of time and effort in creating presentation materials and summarizing huge amounts of text.

But…

Have these tools made mankind smarter?

Those who are not using them are certainly expanding their capabilities. If you don’t have the curiosity to investigate in the first place, you will not be able to expand your abilities even if you have useful tools. No matter how great the tools may be, no one will be able to communicate unless people have their own ideas and can put them into words (verbalization).

It all comes down to the power of words. In order to develop this “power of words,” one must read many books to broaden one’s knowledge. Internet search is based only on the knowledge in the Internet. In the history of the earth, there exists “knowledge” other than the Internet, or rather, there is probably more “knowledge” other than the Internet. AI is no different from the knowledge on which search is based in that it is based on the knowledge in the Net. However, AI can be infused with non-net “knowledge” by humans. The future lies in its learning function. A waddling child will become an adult who can understand and chew Sartre. It means that there will be a difference between those who are good at training others and those who are not.

A capable creator inputs prompts (materials) to the AI, and the AI grows by asking more creators (additional questions) in response. The novelty lies in the fact that it does not rely solely on the Internet for its database, as in search; the AI learns from real human capabilities. If you are stupid, you can’t extend yourself. (If you are stupid, AI will remain stupid.) It grows by adding information it doesn’t know. AI is like a muscle builder, if you will. People who can exercise become more superhuman. AI will widen the gap between people’s abilities.

I believe that in order to live with AI, one must be oneself who fully opens one’s curiosity, feels with all five senses, and tries something new.