ChatGPT is a revolutionary machine that serves as an Ideology Machine, enabling us to surface and examine ideological trends. Through its language processing, ChatGPT can detect semantic packages of words, helping us to understand the ideology associated with certain topics or ideas. For example, when prompted with the phrases “shadow self” and “Jungian”, the machine was able to pick up on a “semantic package” of words, including words related to love, life and other topics. This demonstrates the ability of the machine to identify clusters of words related to a particular idea, even if the machine itself does not necessarily “know” about them.
In addition to this, GPT systems can also detect connections between words and phrases that are not necessarily related. This can be seen when the same system was asked to tell us about a book written by Matthew Handelman that discussed Adorno, the Frankfurt School and mathematics. The machine was able to provide basic details about the book, as well as a sentence that declared “math is a social construct”. This was a false statement, but was a result of the machine connecting topics such as critical theory and mathematics together.
Ideology has long been a subject of interest amongst various theorists. Marx wrote of the “German Ideology” which referred to the implicit beliefs of socialists at the time, while Antonio Gramsci spoke of the “hegemony” – the set of values associated with the ruling class that permeate society without being overtly stated. Clement Greenberg theorized about “kitsch” – the idea of digested form, where pathways of thinking and understanding were more likely to be explored than others.
Finally, ChatGPT has provided us with a unique insight into the linguistic makeup of ideology. It has highlighted both ideology and its critique through its semantic packages, and revealed the power that discourse and representation have in our society. By exploring the output of ChatGPT, we can gain a deeper understanding of the hegemony that exists in our global digital capitalist society.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released the system in March of 2021, but it withheld most of its technical details. For this reason, it is vital to take advantage of the insights provided by ChatGPT at this moment, as it won’t be possible to do so in the future.
OpenAI is a company that develops artificial intelligence breakthroughs. It seeks to ensure that the advancements of AI benefit humanity, and works towards researching, developing, deploying and governing Artificial Intelligence technologies. OpenAI is supported by investors such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, as well as other major technology companies.
Theodor Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist. Adorno was part of the Frankfurt School and advocated the idea that rationality and science could improve existence. Along with his friend and colleague Max Horkheimer, they published their joint work Dialectic of Enlightenment, which looked at the effects of modernity on culture and how this ultimately led to ideology. He believed that music was a powerful force in helping to liberate people from ideology.
In conclusion, ChatGPT is a powerful tool for uncovering many of the ideologues that govern society today. Through the machine’s language processing, it is able to surface and examine many of the aspects of hegemony that are otherwise invisible to us. It is important to take advantage of this window into the inner workings of ideology, as knowledge of this will be difficult to obtain in the future.
