Imagining LIMITS: Can ChatGPT radically re-imagine a new world?

Abstract

A major goal of the LIMITS community is to actively build a world that respects ecological limits by de-centering the idea of growth as progress, focusing on how technology can be used to create such a world and what technology will look like in this world. Achieving this goal involves taking existing philosophies (e.g., Meadow’s Limits to Growth) and translating them into actionable steps. Often, this requires taking broad philosophies that speak of the world generally and thinking about how they can be operationalized through technology. Imagining a world that exists outside of the current paradigms of unlimited growth and uber consumption can be quite difficult, and figuring out how to actually achieve this kind of world sometimes seems like a herculean task. This paper asks whether large language models, specifically ChatGPT, can be used in service of radically re-imagining our world and the place of technology. There are two primary reasons to ask this question. First, new generative tools like Open AI’s ChatGPT promise to change the way people live and work, and such tools have been born and trained in a "growth as progress" world. It is important to be aware of how these tools portray alternatives to growth-based paradigms. The second reason, is to assess the value of such tools for brainstorming alternative, LIMITS-aligned ways of using computing. This paper looks at seven philosophies that challenge the all-growth status quo, and asks ChatGPT to imagine how computing would be used in worlds in which each paradigm was central. Each response was then analyzed to provide an overview of just how radical ChatGPT’s “imagination” can be.