The slogan from ChatGPT

For one of his high school projects, a friend in my son’s class had the idea to ask ChatGPT to come up with a catchy slogan. They received a few suggestions from the artificial intelligence (AI) and decided to select one. Now my son comes home and says it, as a perfectly normal idea: “To come up with our slogan, we asked ChatGPT.”

I am not averse to technology. I studied literature first, but then communications and technology. In my dorm room, there were stacks of books, but also a big computer that I tinkered with to boost its memory, install a hard drive, change the graphics card. Then "smart" phones arrived when I entered the job market, these little portable wonders. And finally, it was the social media revolution that allowed me to find my high school friends again, that is to say those from the generation of computers with green screens where you inserted soft floppy disks...

My son is one of the young people who will have grown up with artificial intelligence in their school pedigree. A normal thing because it has been part of their entourage since entering secondary school. He will not feel, like me, the surprise at the idea of ​​a slogan coming from AI.

However, I am old enough now to know that all these technologies that have transformed my life as a teenager and adult have not always been used for my good. Because the phone allows us to carry our work everywhere, we now talk about the "right to disconnect". Because omnipresent screens change the brains of children , with effects on reading, language, ADHD and social isolation, we are given recommendations on screen time at the same time as the thick guide Living Better with our Child.

It's a bit complicated to navigate all this advice, and it's not easy to apply it when technology has become so essential in our lives that a law is needed to ban cell phones in high school classes. Each time, we react late, after having noticed certain negative effects. While habits are established, with consequences that are already very present.

AI has only just arrived in our lives. “ChatGPT” was chosen as the word of the year by The Economist in 2023. And as a parent, I wonder not about the usefulness of AI (which I have no doubt about), but about the frameworks that we will probably have to put on it . And I don’t really have an answer, even though I am learning a lot about the subject by listening to people who know more than me .

I asked my son if he had informed the teacher about the use of ChatGPT. The teacher was indeed surprised that they had thought of this tool. She thought it was ingenious. And that for future projects, it will now be necessary to define whether its use is permitted, because we can no longer leave the subject vague... Because this reflection goes well beyond parents, it concerns all of society, and it is only just beginning.

Valérie Harvey is a sociologist, specializing in family, particularly the involvement of fathers, which she studied in Quebec and Japan. She also does research on manga, which she teaches at university. She is the author of several novels, essays and children's books, especially about Japan, influenced by her three years in Kyoto. https://nomadesse.com/

FB: www.facebook.com/Nomadesse

Instagram: @vhnomadesse @nomadesse_manga

YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/nomadesse4

Would you like to have the chance to consult all the content published in the Magazine each month in preview, and to have access to our Toolbox including among other things free downloads as practical as they are fun? Subscribe to Belles Combines Magazine now!