The known in the unknown: artificial intelligence

During the conversation, Inguna Skadiņa together with Karina Palkova, assistant professor of Rīga Stradiņš University, discussed why we use artificial intelligence, what is the impact of artificial intelligence on society and what are the risks and consequences. The new artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT recently changed the way people perceive artificial intelligence. Its popularity can be explained by its easy availability.

Although the chatbot created by OpenAI is capable of helping us both with writing e-mails and generating various ideas, it is still necessary to think about the risks and consequences it can create for society. ChatGPT generates ideas based on the available data, so the chatbot can also be politically incorrect and tends to generate false information. This fact is also closely related to one of the main risks, which is that artificial intelligence is able to work with previously available information, but is unable to create something new and unique. Inguna Skadiņa says that artificial intelligence also learns prejudices and stereotypes and uses them when generating information, so the information requested by people also contains various stereotypes and prejudices.

The use of artificial intelligence in the academic environment was also discussed during the conversation. The use of chatbot for academic purposes is difficult because it does not use references. However, the issue of copyright using the texts generated by ChatGPT is also not fully settled and regulated. Karina Palkova reminds the students that in the academic environment you can notice when texts are written by ChatGPT because they have a specific "style" of writing. Despite the risks that ChatGPT creates, Inguna Skadiņa and Karina Palkova emphasise that artificial intelligence creates opportunities, it allows us to use our time more efficiently. It can be a great tool that allows us to express ourselves creatively instead of forcing us to degrade – however, it is up to us how we use artificial intelligence. 

Inguna Skadiņa also reminds about the new project "Balsu talka", which will train technologies to speak Latvian in the long term. The Language Technology Initiative invites everyone to "donate" their voice sample in the name of this idea!

This conversation is available in the Latvijas Radio 1 archive by searching for the programme of the popular scientific radio magazine "Zināmais nezināmajā" on 8 May, at 10:05 under the title "Mākslīgā intelekta radītie riski un cilvēku spējas tos ierobežot" ("Risks created by artificial intelligence and human abilities to limit them").

The Language Technology Initiative is financed by the European Union, as well as the National Development plan.