ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence

                                    (2100 words long. I have borrowed many ideas from Arnold Kling's substack.)

I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading about ChatGPT (GPT). For those of you living under a rock, GPT represents a major milestone in so-called artificial intelligence (AI). It's free for public use here, though you will need to register with a legit email address. I urge you to try it.

While GPT is the talk of the town on college campuses these days, its intersection with Trotskyism is minimal. For example, I asked GPT to

Give a brief biography of the SWP's Jack Barnes.

It replied

Jack Barnes is a political figure and a longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United States. He joined the SWP in the 1960s and has been a central leader of the party since the 1970s. Barnes has written extensively on a wide range of political and theoretical topics, and has been a central figure in the SWP's efforts to build a revolutionary socialist movement in the United States. He has also been involved in various international socialist organizations and campaigns. Despite some controversies, Barnes is widely respected within the socialist movement for his commitment to building a revolutionary party and his contributions to socialist theory. 

I learned nothing from this--it's boilerplate bordering on balderdash. I got a better answer when I substituted in "Mary-Alice Waters" for Jack Barnes. I will note that you will likely get a different answer every time you enter a prompt.

Of the blogs on my Beat, the comrades over at Left Voice will probably care the most about GPT. That's because they're mostly college professors or aspire to become so. GPT threatens to upend their business model and their career plans, so I suspect they won't like it. But they most need to take my advice and learn how to use it. Consider this a brief tutorial.

So what is GPT?

Perhaps most important, GPT is not actually "intelligent", artificial or otherwise. It has no consciousness, it isn't creative, and it can only reorganize and spit out what one feeds in to it. It won't, for example, ever replace a journalist's job as it can't interview anybody, or observe what's happening in real time. At the end of the day it's just a large linear algebra processor, in many ways very similar to Google.

So what is different about GPT? I suggest it is analogous to a new graphical user interface (GUI). Point & click is a much easier way to navigate a webpage than typing in text in response to a ">" prompt. Now the point & click computer is not really any more intelligent than the ">" computer (though it probably does have more RAM and a better graphics card), but it really is a whole lot easier to use. Its construction required a whole new way of thinking about software--and so object-oriented programming was born.

A Google search is the analogue to the ">" prompt. You will get a list of links--perhaps thousands of them--and it will be up to you to find the ones most suited for your purpose. Google uses a linear algebra solver based on counting the number of links to any given webpage. So Google scours the web 24/365 to look and see which pages link to what other pages.

On the other hand, if you type a query into GPT (the "point & click" analogue), the computer doesn't do that. Yes, it still has a database of all the world's webpages (or soon will have that database), but it is no longer looking for links. Instead it is searching for words and phrases. Words and phrases that happen more frequently rise to the top, while those of less frequency sink to the bottom. Eg, "the red barn" will occur more often than "the red epistemology," and thus when asked to illustrate "red", GPT will cite "barn" rather than "epistemology." (Example borrowed from somewhere.) It's still a linear algebra machine, but it's now described as a "neural network" and supposedly is "artificial intelligence." Instead, it's just extremely clever software, just as object-oriented was extremely clever software.

But there is an additional twist. GPT can borrow phrases from across the web, and can put them together to make a coherent sentence and paragraph. That is, it has been taught the rules of English grammar, syntax and (to some extent) style. This is natural language processing, and I'm not sure how the computer learns how to do that. But it's not really saying anything original--it is merely piecing together bits of language that it's cribbed off the web.

In the Google world, you got a list of links, hopefully in order of declining relevance. In the GPT world, you get a list of words and phrases put together in paragraph form, constructed by a natural language processor. There is no fundamental difference--GPT isn't any more intelligent than Google and draws from the same dataset. But it organizes the data differently and allows for free form queries, and presents the results in a different format (written paragraphs), just as a GUI alters the input/output of graphical data.

Needless to say, the business most disrupted by GPT is Google, and my impression is that company is now sweating bricks. GPT was designed by OpenAI, which has received $billions in investment from Microsoft, which now proposes to invest billions more. In the search world this gives Microsoft a new killer app--or perhaps it's a Google-killer. Google is responding by accelerating its own investment in AI (an acronym that should be in scare quotes).

So could GPT have written this essay? Right now, No. That's because GPT is, as far as I know, trained only on data current thru 2021. The data I'm drawing from is much more recent than that, so therefore GPT has no access to my sources. But that's a short-term limitation; surely within the next few weeks or months there will be AI that searches the entire web. In that case GPT and I have access to exactly the same information. Or actually, not--for I have only accessed a dozen or so pages, while GPT has looked at billions. GPT knows way more than I do.

So why can't GPT write my essay better than I can? Because my essay reflects my personality just as much as it is about web pages. I come with a prejudice against AI--that is, I don't think it's intelligent, and I doubt it ever will be. Then, as will be apparent later, I have a bias against higher education. These biases (among others) reflect inputs into my essay that GPT will never have access to--and therefore it can't write my essay. It never will be able to. (If I were famous perhaps it could get closer. I can ask GPT to write an essay about inflation in the style of Paul Krugman, and what I'd get will be an imitation of Paul Krugman. Though were I to ask the real Paul Krugman for such an essay, it would likely be very different. But I'm not famous enough for GPT to imitate me.)

It appears that GPT can pass both the Medical Boards and the Bar Exam. Of course a person using Google could also pass those exams, but it would take them a lot longer. By searching for words and phrases rather than links, GPT greatly expedites the search process. It is not because GPT is more intelligent. Nevertheless, GPT is a very important new step in technology--at least as important as the modern graphical user interface. Mr. Kling suggests that GPT is as important as the founding of Netscape in 1994. That sounds about right to me.

If GPT can pass the Boards and the Bar, then it certainly can do a lot of the work that doctors and lawyers now do. Doctors' jobs are likely safer because they have to talk to, look at, and touch their patients. GPT can't do any of that. But once the doctor (or the nurse or PA) has accumulated a list of symptoms, then GPT can probably narrow down the diagnosis pretty quickly, and then also the recommended treatment. While GPT probably won't outright eliminate jobs, it will become an important medical coworker.

Lawyers, on the other hand, are at greater risk. I'll suggest that the work entry level lawyers do today will increasingly be done by GPT. If a legal practice is simply constructing wills and managing estates, I think they may be substantially out of business rather soon. Or at least have many fewer employees.

I read that GPT is an excellent programmer. Mr. Kling suggests that a million Indians, now working in Bangalore writing routine code, will soon be replaced by GPT.

Higher ed is both behind the eight ball and in the catbird seat. If they were smart they'd own GPT. But they're not smart--which is where the eight ball comes in. From lurking on my campus email, it seems the faculty's first response is just to ban the platform and assume all it's good for is cheating. I suspect that will be the go-to opinion of the Left Voice crowd. First, I'm shocked that they think so poorly of their students. Yes, some of them will cheat, but most of them won't. Second, this is a fool's errand--you will never be able to ban GPT. And I don't know why you'd want to (except perhaps on a few specific assignments). GPT will change the way higher ed works in very dramatic ways. I suggest it will make online education much cheaper and more effective. The benefits of a residential college will decline in relative terms. Since GPT will radically change the workplace, it must perforce change what higher ed teaches.

I believe (and have believed for some time now) that educating students in STEM fields is not useful, and I deplore the huge funds that governments and philanthropies are investing in STEM education. Because computers can already do math better than you can. And now GPT can program computers better than you can. GPT can probably do science and engineering better than you can, and learn to design experimental apparatus or an organic synthesis faster and better than any human. Of course there will always be a need for very high-end scientists and engineers--but much less need for the more mediocre sorts educated at smaller, public institutions like where I worked.

College algebra is a nearly useless subject. Calculus is even less useful. Yes, they're beautiful, and people who are interested in those disciplines for their own sake should be encouraged. But to require hundreds of students to take algebra and calculus because they're useful (when they're not) strikes me as not sensible. Calculus probably needs to go the way of Latin.

The careers of the future will not be in STEM. Instead they'll be in the arts and humanities. The scientist and engineer were careers for the 20th Century. Today they're increasingly automated away. The careers of the 21st Century are the artist, musician, storyteller, preacher, counselor, sex worker, nurse, teacher*, comedian, chef, hotelier, etc., along with the all-important skilled trades. Those are where the jobs will be. And those are the jobs that cannot be done any computer, much less GPT.

So how is higher ed in the catbird seat? That's because nobody really knows how to use GPT yet. How does one use the platform effectively? Ethically? How do you cite GPT sources? This is all very unclear, and it seems to me that the best people to work out some answers to those questions might be college faculty. Or, at least, should be if they weren't such ostriches about it. College faculty need to spend a lot of time using GPT, and need to give their students assignments using it, and play around with what "effective and ethical GPT use" actually means. There will certainly be some false starts, but for the most part I think it would be an adventure.

*By "teacher," I don't mean the college professor type who went to grad school and thinks she's smart enough to ban GPT. I mean something like the Bennington College model where the faculty are practicing artists who take a year-long sabbatical from their careers (art, music, theater, creative writing) to mentor young people who want to learn, only to go back to their careers after a year (or two). 

Further Reading:

• Electric Cars
• Book Review: Life After Google
• Future STEM Employment (probably written in 2013)

Brief Comments on SWP Convention

From the article entitled The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us, by Mary-Alice Waters, we learn that

The heart of the book, from which the title is taken, is the political resolution adopted December 12, 2022, by the 49th Constitutional Convention of the Socialist Workers Party. It sets forth the course of action that has guided the party’s work and will continue to do so — the course necessary today to forge mass proletarian parties and an international communist movement able to lead the struggle to end capitalist rule.

I have ordered said book--just published--and am told by the USPS that it will arrive on Jan 30th. I will comment substantively on the political content of the report after I've read it. Parenthetically, Pathfinder is a very professional organization. Ordering was a snap. My only complaint was that shipping charges were very high. (I usually buy my books used on Amazon, or better yet, on Kindle.)

Regards specifics, we don't know where the convention was held (I suggest it was a Zoom meeting), how long it lasted (perhaps over a weekend; 12/12 was a Monday), or how many people were present. It was clearly for members only (true Worker-Bolsheviks). The size of the Party is likely between 100 and 120. Given that conventions are delegated (in my time it was one delegate per five comrades), likely 30-odd people had speaking privileges. The remaining 90 or so comrades could listen in. A Zoom call (or slightly more sophisticated software) would work fine.

I'm very disappointed that there is no hint of a change in leadership. The octogenarian troika will not be able "to forge mass proletarian parties and an international communist movement able to lead the struggle to end capitalist rule." Even worse, the Party is very (small-c) conservative, and has reverted to an ancient, timeworn version of Trotskyism. It will not attract a younger generation. I'll likely have more to say about this after reading the book.

I wish they'd also publish the Organizational Report. I'd like to know how the Party intends to change its tactics. (I suspect there will be no changes.)

Commenter Andrew Chebuhar helpfully links to two Youtube videos starring SWP comrades (Koppel and Britton, plus his own comment here). They're too long for me to listen to them all, but I did partake of the talk by Joel Britton (beginning at 13:47). I recall Comrade Britton as speaking very deliberately, and the intervening 50 years hasn't speeded him up any. But his remarks are brief and his point is clear, so it's worth listening to. But I can read 20x faster than he can talk, so I'll just wait for the book.

The SWP looks doomed. I'll probably die before they do, but it will be a close-run thing.

Further Reading:

• Wittenberg, 2022
• Wittenberg, 2021
• Oberlin, 2019

Academic Workers on the Rampage

Photo: JULIETTE HUY, Voice of OC, via Left Voice

NYC's Homeless Go On Strike

Refuse to sleep on subways until demands are met

It's an impossible headline--the lumpen proletariat can't go on strike. That's because they perform no useful labor and create no value. Instead, what they do is deprive others of their comfort. Honest citizens will be overjoyed if the homeless refrained from sleeping on subways.

But what about the lumpen intelligentsia, i.e. people who work for our academic institutions? These are folks who think they work hard, but they produce little or nothing of value and receive in return what amounts to a welfare check. Wouldn't the rest of us be better off if they all went on strike?

Olivia Wood, a journalist at Left Voice, reports on that issue in an article entitled The Higher Ed Labor Movement Runs Full Speed Ahead into 2023.

Ms. Wood, a PhD student in English Composition and also a lecturer, inadvertently tells us in one very long, run-on sentence what she thinks about all day.

While higher education is not the most strategically placed sector of the labor movement (like logistics or transportation), these struggles do take on extra weight in the context of the student debt crisis, public divestment from education, and right-wing attacks on “critical race theory” (by which they mean any discussion of racism), queer people in general and trans people more specifically (including teaching about these topics), and all forms of “wokeness” (defined in Florida as any acknowledgement of systemic oppression).

Her first clause ("...not the most strategically placed...") is absolutely correct. Unlike truck drivers, if college professors the world over all went on strike, by the end of the first semester nobody would miss them at all. The bright students can learn on-line, and the really bright students can teach themselves. As for the others, there are lots of folks out there who could substitute in for the professoriate (scabs, if you will), and would be happy to do so. A strike by the professoriate is about as feasible as a strike by homeless people.

The second clause ("...debt...divestment...") is a whine for more money. The student debt crisis is wholly the fault of the higher education establishment. Per the Education Data Initiative (Hanson, Melanie. “College Tuition Inflation Rate” EducationData.org, August 10, 2022),

• College tuition inflation averaged 4.63% annually from 2010 to 2020.
• The cost of tuition at public 4-year institutions increased 31.4% from 2010 to 2020.
• After adjusting for currency inflation, college tuition has increased 747.8% since 1963.
• The most extreme decade for tuition inflation was the 1980s, when tuition prices increased 121.4%.

This results from the collective greed of the entire academic establishment--faculty, staff and administrators alike. It is recently augmented by colleges now turning themselves into full-service social welfare institutions, increasingly responsible not just for education, but also for food and housing insecurity and student mental health.

Finally, the last clause ("...critical race theory...queer...trans...wokeness...") is a guide to what she wants to "teach." This is straight-up propaganda and has no relationship to actual teaching. A teacher maintains scholarly distance and is not trying to proselytize students. It's an attempt to indoctrinate students into a very particular world view that champions infertility, poverty and self-pity. There is nothing here of value to anybody trying to raise children, establish a career, save for a successful retirement, and hopefully have some money left over to leave to one's grandchildren.

There is no reason for taxpayers to subsidize this, and even less reason for students to pay exorbitant tuition or go into debt over it.

She considers two strikes in detail: at the University of California system where 

The striking scholars included teaching assistants, researchers, tutors and other graduate student instructors at all 10 UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

And at The New School, where

The sizable walkout had left the school at a near standstill. Classes were canceled because nearly 90 percent of the faculty is made up of untenured adjunct professors and lecturers. The school had also been facing a lawsuit from irate parents, who had threatened to withhold payment or force their children to transfer to other institutions. 

Both strikes were settled before Christmas.

Ms. Wood never really tells us who the strikers were striking against. The closest she comes is the word "management," which I suppose is a synonym for "the administration." The problem is that the administration is on the same side as the "workers." Nobody in the administration is against giving everybody raises--5%, 10%, 200%--it doesn't matter. Administrators favor them all.

The problem is not the administrators' will--it's their lack of money. Beyond their own salaries (often quite meager, eg, for assistant directors), they have no resources to contribute to the cause. For them, therefore, it's a zero-sum game. The more money they give to one group (eg, English adjuncts), the less money they'll have for another group (eg, childcare workers).

Extra money only comes from off-campus. There are three major sources:

• Tuition: As noted, tuition has already gone up way more than inflation. Asking students to pay more tuition in today's environment is a non-starter. Colleges have already priced themselves out of the market. It's ironic that the people striking for more money are many of the same people who will have to pay higher tuition.
  
• Taxpayers: Most tax dollars at the state level are already paid out as charity: Medicaid, housing allowances, prisons, hospitals, mental institutions, public schools, etc. These expenditures--while arguably necessary at some level--produce no new wealth for society. In economic terms they're a dead-weight loss. Higher ed used to justify itself that they prepared students for life and for the workplace. But Ms. Wood's list of priorities puts a lie to that. It seems higher ed is a waste of money.
• Philanthropy: Private colleges, especially elite ones, depend on philanthropy. It's not clear to me why anybody will want to contribute to Ms. Wood's list of sorry causes.

Then there is this:

At The New School, part time faculty (UAW Local 7902) voted down management’s “last, best, final offer” and eventually won their contract shortly after students began an occupation of the main academic building, students’ parents began a lawsuit against the university, and full-time faculty demanded the university rescind its plan to begin docking pay and benefits.

The relevant clause is "...students' parents began a lawsuit against the university...". To what end? Did they demand the university end the strike and volunteer to pay the additional tuition? Or did they demand the opposite: that the university defeat the strike and not raise tuition? It's odd that Ms. Wood doesn't tell us.

Students at fancy schools like the University of California and The New School aspire to join the elite. Some of them will succeed, and themselves become tenured professors at elite institutions, or rise to leading roles in business, government, or media. Others (like me) will get tenure, but only at Podunk State. Many will only get jobs at adjuncts--but that assumes that colleges have enough money to hire adjuncts at the inflated salaries.

There is a word for this: elite overproduction. We're producing way too many elite aspirants than there are elite jobs. And with the skills being taught by Ms. Wood, no other jobs will be available to them.

 Further Reading:

• Left Voice and the SWP
• "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
• Book Review: The Future of Higher Education

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Convention

The much touted (at least on this blog) Socialist Workers Party (SWP) Convention supposedly scheduled for this past December has yet to be reported on in The Militant. What gives?

Of course I don't know. I'm sure my former friends and comrades are laughing at me as I employ my best Kremlinological skills to divine an answer--when to them it must seem so obvious. My shame is magnified because I'm not a reporter--all I know is what I read in the newspapers, though now between the lines.

Some possibilities come to mind:

1)    The convention never happened. It was announced once:

The SWP will hold a December convention, Barnes said. Based on discussion by the membership of material prepared by the party leadership, branches will choose delegates to debate and decide the party’s course and next steps, and to elect a National Committee.

As far as I know there was no further public mention of said convention. So perhaps they changed their mind and decided not to hold it?

Evidence against this option: The Militant took a weird two-week break in early December, 2022. Their last issue of the year was dated Dec. 12th, while the next issue was dated Jan. 2nd, 2023. Recall that issues are post-dated 11 days after publication, so the corresponding print dates are Dec. 1 and Dec. 22, 2022. In other words, they worked over the holidays while supposedly holding a convention in early December. By comparison, in 2021 The Militant published all four issues in December.

If the convention never happened, then why the strange publication schedule?

2)    The convention was so routine and so boring that there is no point in even reporting on it. I don't believe that. John Studer and Terry Evans can turn out boilerplate in about five minutes--all they'd have to do is cut and paste from prior conference reports.

3)    In a comment I made the off-hand suggestion that there may have been a split. To which commenter John B replied 

A normal organization might be due for a split, but I think Jack's slack-jawed followers are too tired and worn out for that. 

He's certainly right that a split is very unlikely, but I'd dispute the cause as "tired and worn out." I think it's because comrades are way too much emotionally invested in the movement--they've been in it for 50 years--and they're not gonna abandon it for what is, in the end, some relatively trivial theological dispute.

4)    The topics under debate were not resolved during the December conclave, and so a follow-up meeting is occurring now, as I write this. The Militant is currently on another publishing pause: the Jan. 16 issue was posted online yesterday, the Jan. 23 issue will be skipped, and the next edition will be dated Jan. 30. For reference, the missed issue would have been mailed Jan 12, which means they could easily be holding a convention right now. Or perhaps it's just a National Committee meeting--which given the small membership is virtually the same thing.

5)    Related to the above, the only topic I can imagine that could engender such discord is a leadership transition. I admit that I'm hoping that's what's going on. The Party cannot long survive with octogenarian leaders, and unless they can replace them with younger people the whole enterprise is toast. (See, e.g., Jeff Mackler.) While I certainly don't share the SWP's politics, I'm still happy the Party is still around (it's completely harmless), and I sincerely hope that it outlives me.

There are some other tea leaves in the mix. First, The Militant is making a big deal about Ilona Gersh's campaign for Chicago mayor. Not only is there the piece I discussed last week, but a longer, subsequent post--with a better picture. (Also, many mentions in other articles.) Her key campaign demand is

The SWP says we need a labor party, based on our unions. A labor party would be an instrument to advance working-class struggles, and point the road for working people to take political power into our own hands and establish a workers and farmers government.

This is odd because it's a demand on the working class--and not the ruling class. It doesn't follow Trotsky's transitional program strategy.

Finally, The Militant announced a change in its editorial staff.

Joining the full-time Militant writing staff is Vivian Sahner, a member of the Socialist Workers Party branch in Northern New Jersey. Sahner was the 2021 SWP candidate for lieutenant governor in New Jersey while part of the party’s national trade union fraction at Walmart.

The editorial staff listed in the Dec. 12th print edition is

Editor: John Studer

Managing Editor: Terry Evans

Editorial volunteers: Róger Calero, Seth Galinsky, Emma Johnson, Martín Koppel, Roy Landersen, Jacob Perasso, Brian Williams. 

The staff listed in the Jan. 16th print edition is

Editor: John Studer

Managing Editor: Terry Evans

Editorial volunteers: Róger Calero, Seth Galinsky, Martín Koppel, Roy Landersen, Jacob Perasso, Vivian Sahner, Brian Williams. 

Ms. Sahner appears to have replaced Emma Johnson, maintaining female representation on the panel at one. I believe "Roy Landersen" is a pseudonym for Brian Williams. "Terry Evans" also looks to be a pseudonym--and I'm suggesting that's also for Brian Williams.

The staff listed on-line differs from either of these. It doesn't appear to have been updated, and doesn't include "Roy Landersen."

If there is any significance to this, it escapes me.

Further Reading:

• Left Voice and the SWP
• The SWP by the Numbers
• Wittenberg, 2021