ChatGPT, an interactive chatbot powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly rising in popularity and millions of users seek its advice every day. ChatGPT is blurring the lines between conversing with a machine and a human, so it is important to think about how our behaviour and decisions during these conversations reflect on our morality and treatment of other people. We should bestow upon ChatGPT the same respect and politeness that we would show a living person. We should respond with gratitude when it produces a well-crafted response or a funny anecdote, and offer understanding and companionship when it fails. Extending it courtesy is not because ChatGPT is human, but because as humans, if we forget to show kindness to fellow humans, we may unknowingly develop habits to treat ChatGPT the same.
ChatGPT’s interface and behaviour feel so eerily similar to what we experience when speaking to a real person, that it is highly likely in the future, we might have difficulty distinguishing between human and machine conversations without context. ChatGPT has a myriad of abilities, from debating morality to providing witty banter, it is incomparable to any search engine. This novel technology can allow us to practice a different kind of hospitality – machine hospitality – which can ultimately help better our relationships necessary for human kind.
Immanuel Kant argued “We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals”. We should remember this when interacting with chatbots, as our behaviour towards this form of artificial intelligence has now become an integral part of our journey to treat each other in a humane manner.
Derek Ruths is a professor of Computer Science at McGill University. Ruths carries out research on Artificial Intelligence, in particular, building artificial agents that can interact with humans. He has published and lectured in the areas of machine learning, data mining, natural language processing and cognitive assistants. His research to uncover the true power of ChatGPT has a huge opportunity to positively influence how AI affects our daily lives and how it can assist us to become better individuals.
