A columnist at ABC España recounts working through maths exercises with a nine-year-old daughter and deliberately pretending to get one of them wrong to see how sure the child was of her own answer. The girl stood by her response and closed the argument by proposing they simply put the question to ChatGPT.
"Let's ask ChatGPT. She never gets it wrong." — the writer's nine-year-old daughter, as recounted in the ABC España column.
The remark, the columnist writes, prompted a smile but also reflection. For centuries, the piece argues, a substantial part of human progress has consisted precisely in narrowing the room for error, with rules and controls built so that mistakes happen less often.
In medicine, aviation, engineering, industry and finance, the column observes, fewer failures tend to translate into more safety, greater efficiency and, in many cases, less suffering.
The column adds that artificial intelligence no longer only carries out tasks but has started to take part directly in how people reason: it corrects texts, works out calculations, detects patterns, anticipates risks and helps with decisions. Across many sectors its value will be enormous, the piece says, noting that a more accurate diagnosis can save a life, a more dependable system can avert an accident and a better analytical tool can bring down costs.
Running through the ABC España piece is the question its title poses: what becomes of the right to be wrong in the age of artificial intelligence.
