How ChatGPT Is A Bullshit Artist
ChatGPT’s core function is bullshitting about a variety of subjects. As Harry G. Frankfurt says in his (slim) book On Bullshit:
The essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony. In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake or a phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself) inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made.
This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.
In that sense, I’m not using bullshit as a pejorative but as a philosophical category, one which I think fits generative, pre-trained chatbots to a T. They are true bullshit artists. The true spawn of Silicon Valley.
The Philosophy Of Bullshit
Bullshit is not necessarily false, nor is it necessarily deceptive. As Frankfurt says, “The bullshitter may not deceive us, or…
