The big debate: risks and benefits of artificial intelligence

Published in

Analyst’s corner

4 min readJun 19, 2023

As technology advances at an ever-increasing pace, the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly relevant in our daily lives. From chatbots and virtual assistants to self-driving cars and automated manufacturing, AI is changing the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us.

But with great power comes great responsibility, and as we continue to develop and deploy AI, we must also consider the ethical and practical implications of this technology.

Digital sophists debating artificial intelligence

To explore these issues, I decided to create a unique video featuring a debate on the risks and benefits of AI. But instead of having human experts argue each side, I used ChatGPT to defend both perspectives. This allowed me to present a compelling and thought-provoking conversation between two AIs, each presenting its own arguments and counter-arguments.

The identity of one debater was hidden until the end of the video to create a more fun and engaging scene. The idea was to create something as informative as entertaining.

Sophists were traveling rhetoricians in ancient Greece who were paid to teach people techniques to become great arguers and persuaders. They were relativists who believed there was no absolute truth, only probable.

My original intention was to make ChatGPT discuss with Bing (Microsoft Chatbot), but the result wasn’t so interesting. It seems Bing is more focused on surfing online content to provide information. It wasn’t willing to debate. ChatGPT plays it more freely and was open to interpreting different roles in the debate.

The production of the script with artificial intelligence

The process of creating this video was both challenging and rewarding. I spent many hours iterating prompts and refining the script with the use of ChatGPT on two different computers; one debating with the other. The initial versions were a little boring. The two instances of ChatGPT tend to find agreement quickly and the debate becomes repetitive. I had to put everything together and ask ChatGPT to improve the script, making the debaters more provocative and introducing some humor into the story.

The list of risks and benefits of AI presented in this video were identified by ChatGPT, and so were the compelling and nuanced arguments from each perspective. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised at the level of detail and complexity that the model was able to generate, and I think viewers may appreciate the thought-provoking nature of the debate.

Another artificial intelligence for the avatars

To bring ChatGPT to life I used Synthesia, another AI platform capable of transforming text into a realistic person speaking. The stock avatars used by Synthesia are based on real people’s images and gestures. That generated an unexpected issue.

After setting my desired script on the platform with the two debaters defending different opinions and clicking on the button to generate the video, Synthesia rejected my script. They said I used the characters to do an opinionated speech on AI. As the stock avatars are real people, they have a very strict policy to protect their likenesses.

To get around the situation I had to add a disclaimer at the end of the video:

DISCLAIMER

“The arguments expressed by the debaters in this video were written by ChatGPT and don’t represent the thoughts or opinions of the actors playing both ChatGPT avatars.”

Use artificial intelligence wisely

Ultimately, my goal with this video is to raise awareness about the complex issues surrounding AI and to encourage viewers to consider the ways in which this technology is impacting our world. This is just an opening for more debates and an alert to how we should act to move forward with research in artificial intelligence.

By engaging in open and honest dialogue about the risks and benefits of AI, we can work together to ensure that this technology is used in a responsible and ethical way, for the betterment of society as a whole.