Chat GPT is a system which allows allows an individual to interact with an Artificial Intelligence.

Especially over the last decade, Artificial Intelligence has been the ground of services that almost all of us use directly or indirectly. The voice assistants of our smartphones, home automation, entertainment, navigation systems, more accurate diagnostic services… These are just some of the many examples in which an ICT system manages to find increasingly refined solutions, learning from the past .

Launched a few months ago, the Chat GPT service triggers many debates, although in the form of a chat, you have the feeling of chatting with a real person. Science fiction has educated us for generations to dream of being able to progress as humanity thanks to the collaboration with the extraordinary power of computers and machines.

Hence the enormous interest that this system (along with its twin, developed by Microsoft) has aroused.

There would be – and there will be – to discuss for years about what we are experiencing. Having worked in the field of algorithms in the last years, however, we can confirm that the use of the A.I. offers previously unexpected potential. Provided, however, that it is clear that Artificial Intelligence can lead the user to have progressive optimization (of a method, a process, the understanding and management of something) and not a tool for de-responsibility. The will to use a tool to make real improvements for society is and still remains linked to the human being.

The same human being who has a smartphone in his pocket that has more computing power than the computer used to send the Apollo to the moon and which is (also) used to take selfies in front of the mirror in the bathroom.

Back to Chat GPT. Interacting with this chatbot is interesting because it processes the information it has access to in order to answer to the questions asked. It is also interesting for how it simulates the response mode of a human being, using a sort of mirroring. The answers follow the questions – a bit like they taught us in elementary school. And in doing so, our mirror neurons develop empathy and trust towards this algorithm. Similarly, the algorithm uses logic inspired by neural functioning to evolve over time.

We chatted with Chat GPT about Aikido. We asked him (or her?) some questions, to see if and how Artificial Intelligence could analyze our world – the world of Aikido – in a congruous way or not. And if, in case, could provide some indication to improve.

It certainly emerged that Artificial Intelligence knows what the technical and value content inside Aikido practice. Equally certain is the definition of ours as a world that has lost its attractiveness over the last few decades.

When you ask an algorithm to indicate the causes and remedies of a situation, you usually see a very sharp set of answers.

Yet a peculiar thing occurred with Chat GPT.

On the one hand it emerges that the cause and remedy for a drop in popularity would be to preserve a certain “martial art integrity”. Safeguarding the technical heritage, without diluting tradition.

On the other hand, for Artificial Intelligence, Aikido teachers should adapt teaching to make Aikido accessible to the widest audience possible.

All of this, however, without exceeding in marketing but without neglecting it. On the contrary, by using web and multimedia channels in a pervasive way.

In short, the binomial “tradition & innovation”. That binomial that is so abused that it can be found as the subtitle of advertising campaigns for anything.

And the Artificial Intelligence on Aikido got stuck in the “tradition and innovation” loop, without leading to univocal suggestions. A bit as if our navigator, at a certain point, said: “Go wherever you like”.

What to say…

It is suggestive to think of the multiple meanings that “AI” can have. O’Sensei also played on this aspect. Ai of Aikido (合) or ai of “meet” (会) ai of “love” (愛)?

It is sure that in the vision of the founder, Aikido had to be a tool to help humanity build and relate as a family.

And this is where heart and reason converge. If even an Artificial Intelligence understands that the technical and didactic language can be adapted to reach the widest possible audience, so that a message of individual and social improvement can reach everyone…

So why do we sometimes defend tradition so much?
Do we use it to mask the absence of the heart through the “rationality” of an educational system?

Disclaimer: picture by Pixabay from Pexels