Human Panic Diary

“人类恐慌日记”

On March 14th, before class, my teacher jokingly said, "Today is Einstein's birthday." At that moment, I thought of it as the day when a brilliant mind was born. Little did I know that on that very same day, GPT-4 was released. Within the next 24 hours, it quickly caused a sensation. It seemed as if overnight, everyone was discussing a new round of AI revolution. And when I tried to divert my attention from this anxiety, I found that the top three articles recommended by WeChat's "Moments" were all about GPT4. My daily life seems to be unable to get rid of the keywords related to AI. All the headlines were very aggressive: "ChatGPT upgraded!", "GPT-4 shocking release!", "GPT-4 crowned as king!"... One of them even showed that 105 of my friends had read it.

Because someone joked that this was "the end of humanity," I decided to record this historic "event" with a picture. I took a screenshot of every WeChat moment related to GPT4 shared by my friends that I saw when I woke up that day, and there were a total of 12 of them.

Although I have always been a person who habitually "interacts with AI tools" and "actively learns about AI progress", and I have not joined the ranks of those who think "AI will replace humans" negatively, I still feel anxious about the updates of AI system time and time again.

As Kevin Kelly mentioned in an interview, "In the short term, AI is overhyped. But in the long run, I think AI is underestimated." I have always believed that this is just the beginning, and we are at a turning point in history, and the great changes have just begun.

What really worries me is not whether it will "take away our jobs," but that any legislation related to artificial intelligence technology will be difficult to keep up with the pace of its development. During this time, there will be many fuzzy gray areas.

This crisis, as mentioned by Greene, a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, "If you believe that this technology has the potential to be transformative, then I think you have to be nervous about it."

Technical tools, like a black box, have infinite potential as well as countless dangers, which is the research direction that interests me. In the next few months, I will tell my story with AI through blog posts and art archives.

Article&Picture/Ziyao Lin

English translation/ChatGPT

3月14号老师在课前开玩笑式地说：“今天是爱因斯坦的生日。” 当时我想到的是“聪明的大脑诞生”的日子。没想到，也就是在这一天，GPT-4发布。在之后24小时内很快引起了轩然大波。似乎一夜之间所有人都在讨论新一轮的AI革命。而当我想转移这种焦虑的注意力的时候，我发现微信自动推送的“看一看”文章排名前三篇都是关于GPT4，我的日常生活似乎已经摆脱不掉有关AI的关键词。所有标题都非常有攻击性：“ChatGPT大升级！”，“GPT-4震撼发布！”，“GPT-4王者加冕！”······其中一篇甚至显示我的105个朋友看过。

因为有人开玩笑地提到这是：“人类终结”，于是我决定把这个历史性的“事件”用一张图记录下来。上边截取了当天我醒来时看到的我的朋友们分享的每一条有关GPT4的微信朋友圈消息，总共有12条。

即使我已经是一个习惯和AI工具“打交道”的一直处于“积极了解AI进展”的人，即使我并没有加入消极地认为“AI会取代人类”的行列，还是会一次又一次地为AI的更新信息感到焦虑不安。

就像凯文·凯利在访谈中提到的：“短期来说，AI被过度炒作。但长期来看，我认为AI被低估了。”我始终相信，现在只是一个开端，我们站在历史的转折点，巨变才刚刚开始。

而真正让我担心的不是它是否让我们“失去工作”，而是担心任何围绕人工智能技术的立法都将难以跟上发展的步伐。而这期间就会产生很多模糊危险的灰色地带。

这种危机感就像科罗拉多大学医学院的研究员Greene所说的：“如果你相信这项技术具有变革的潜力，那么我认为你必须对此感到紧张。” 黑盒子一般具有无限潜力也具有无数危险的技术工具，是我感兴趣的研究方向。在接下来的几个月，我将以博客和艺术档案的形式讲述我与AI的故事。

图文/林梓瑶

英文翻译/ChatGPT

References：

JO, A. (2023). THE PROMISE AND PERIL OF GENERATIVE AI. Nature, 614.