Ghosts in the {AI}

This work regards the social side of trustworthiness in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) according to two congruent shades. Indeed, the first paragraph, drawing aid from a passage of The Science of Logic by G. W. F. Hegel, proposes a qualitative and semantic interpretation of the origin of the so-called “emergent abilities” of LLMs, which are deemed something more complex than a trivial deceit. The second paragraph rather concerns the topic of trustworthiness and responsibility of LLMs from an ethical and phenomenological perspective, proposing a parallelism between the issue of extended mind and the generative transformers as a cognitive extension. The focus lies on the repercussions for the intensive utilization, which can be summarized in the concepts of cognitive depletion and digital dementia, leading to a debasement of precious human qualities – creativity, attention, interpretational ability. Our suggestion, then, first of all trusting—because we have to trust—the critical sense of human users, is directed towards some kind of ethics of AI to introduce in the K-12 category. Our aim remains the wished for design of a pacific coexistence.