Da: Giacomo DA ROS
Data: 1 feb 2023, 12:24 +0100
A: Sergei GURIEV
Cc: MATHIAS VICHERAT
Oggetto: on ChatGPT
Dear Mr Guriev,
I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to you to express my deep concern with regard to your email from last Wednesday. I immediately felt irritated and offended by it - but waited a few days to check whether these feelings would subside. They did not, which is why I am ultimately sending this email. I apologise in advance for its length and occasional frankness.
I am a first-year Master's student at the School of Public Affairs. I have also been interested in science and technology and the way they shape culture my whole life, which is why I have paid particular attention to the development of AI models and the tools through which us humans can interface with them. Once ChatGPT was released to the public, I participated in the generalised awe at the power and flexibility of this tool, while being aware of its shortcomings. I have talked about this topic with many of my fellow students here at Sciences Po and have enjoyed the meaningful discussions that have come out of these interactions. Your email did not feel like a meaningful contribution to the debate, which is rather troubling coming from the Administration of a University that likes to think of itself as one of the world's premier social sciences institutions.
The letter was rather a demonstration of the Administration's failure to grasp even basic concepts about the direction of technological evolution. I feel offended by the fact that the Administration has felt compelled to lecture us on this topic while demonstrating such poor understanding of it. I do not see how this institution plans to be able to educate policy professionals and help them understand societal change if it is incapable of doing so itself. A radical rethinking of education is in order - not a few conferences. I am enormously troubled by the consequences of this and other episodes I have witnessed at Sciences Po over the past few years that are symptoms of shockingly insufficient scientific education. Given the rising importance and complexity of technology in our lives, I cannot understate my discomfort at knowing future policymakers are educated by people who do not comprehend even its basic tenets.
I have no fear in telling you that I have made use of AI tools over the course of the previous semester and plan to do so in my remaining time at Sciences Po. I also feel like it is necessary to make the Administration aware of the fact that this is the case for a large and growing number of my fellow students. Tools such as ChatGPT have been extremely useful to find satisfying, difficult-to-obtain answers to complex questions. I hope an explanation of how LLMs such as GPT-3 operate is unnecessary, but from the tone of your email I fear one might be needed. LLMs are to Google as Google is to encyclopedias - a more powerful way of organising knowledge. This is mainly why the email was so irritating - because if one knows what he or she is talking about, it is evident that trying to ban the use of tools such as ChatGPT is both impossible and illogical (in Bill Clinton's words, "nailing Jell-O to the wall"). This is a genie-out-of-the-bottle moment and there is no way to go forward but to understand and accept what is happening.
Writer John Warner has published an article titled "ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving". I encourage the Administration to read it. I believe it makes the most important point in all of this debate. If students can "hack" Sciences Po by way of using ChatGPT it deserves to be hacked. The present email is the culmination of my frustration with Sciences Po's extremely low academic standards and the absence of stimuli I have experienced for the better part of the last 3+ years. This is why I personally find no real use in coming to most Sciences Po classes - because I do not believe it, and maybe higher education in general, is apt at preparing people for the world that is being born. This fills me with sadness: it should not be up to me to point out to the Administration of one of the world's leading universities - ostensibly, a place of knowledge - how knowledge itself is evolving.
It is often said that those who do not understand or accept the future are bound to be those who benefit the least - or suffer the most - from its advent. I believe this is the case with the approach to innovation Sciences Po has showed through your email. Again, I feel demeaned and irritated by the Administration's conduct. However, my ultimate goal in writing this email is improving understanding of paradigm-shifting evolutions among Sciences Po's student population - and, in turn, future policymakers. I am willing to express these same feelings to whoever feels this is important enough to warrant their attention and would be happy to exchange views with them.
I look forward to your answer and thank you for your time. Kind regards,
Giacomo Da Ros