AI beyond a new academic hype

an interdisciplinary theoretical analytical experiment (computational, linguistic and ethical) of an AI tool

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the newest technological hype. Although it involves a great diversity of technologies, the disseminated image of AI has been a generic, super-powerful, extremely negative one, at the edge of dystopian, especially in works of science fiction. Recently, following the launch of ChatGPT, one finds an explosion of journalistic and academic publications, some of which reinforce this public imagination. In academia, AI’s risks remain highlighted and even apocalyptic scenarios related to it are taken into consideration. Ethical concerns, then, take on eminently negative connotations, and the much more realistic possible benefits of AIs are under-focused. We highlight in this paper the importance of going beyond the hype and developing multi/interdisciplinary, delimited, realistic, and thoughtful approaches. Employing the collective intelligence embodied in the interaction between researchers from three fields —Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy— we approach a free machine translation tool: Google Translate. Our goal is to show that well-defined, multidisciplinary, technically supported approaches that do not adhere to sensationalist discourse lead us to more epistemically consistent and more thoughtful critical-normative reflections, which would be crucial for advancing the debate on AI.