ChatGPT is b******t. People are bullshitters.

Please like, share, comment, and subscribe. It helps grow the newsletter and podcast without a financial contribution on your part. Anything is very much appreciated. And thank you, as always, for reading and listening.

About the Author

Jimmy Alfonso Licon is a philosophy professor at Arizona State University working on ignorance, ethics, cooperation and God. Before that, he taught at University of Maryland, Georgetown, and Towson University. He loves classic rock and Western, movies, and combat sports. He lives with his wife, a prosecutor, and family at the foot of the Superstition Mountains. He also abides.

In this special video episode of Uncommon Wisdom, I talk with philosophers Michael T. Hicks and Joe Slater of the University of Glasgow about their paper “ChatGPT is b******t” (Ethics and Information Technology) and my companion piece “ChatGPT is b******t (partly) because people are bullshitters” (Philosophy & Technology). Here we unpack what Harry Frankfurt meant by b******t, how large language models exemplify it, why the line between “soft” and “hard” b******t matters, and a little bit whether human b******t plays a role here. Along the way we discuss AI design, the attention economy, and why both humans and machines seem wired to sound smart even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

My apologies for the video quality on my end. I shot the video underwater. Just kidding, but who can tell the difference? In any case enjoy!

Please like, share, comment, and subscribe. It helps grow the newsletter and podcast without a financial contribution on your part. Anything is very much appreciated. And thank you, as always, for reading and listening.

Get full access to Uncommon Wisdom at jimmyalfonsolicon.substack.com/subscribe