ChatGPT is in the news every day now and it's interesting to follow the multiple sides of the discussion about its merits and pitfalls as well as the fears of AI taking over and destroying us.
I'll ask ChatGPT to describe itself so we can start with that.
How do you describe yourself in simple terms?
I am a computer program designed to understand and generate human language.
And here's a link so you can check it out yourself.
Here's my take:
Way back (50 years) when I was in 2nd year mechanical engineering, I managed to save up enough pennies to buy myself a calculator. I think it was $40 and all it did was basic math with maybe one memory function. At the time, we were allowed slide rules in exams but not calculators. The fear on the street at the time was that wide use of a calculator would ruin children's ability to do simple math in their heads and that people without calculators would be at a disadvantage in an exam.
Guess what, it did just that. Have you ever been in line to buy something when the power goes out? Nobody can give the correct change without the cash register (calculator). The store is shut down. But also, have you ever been in a math exam without a calculator?
But ... it seems that we as a society have managed to get by without being able to add or subtract on demand. Tools to do that are all around us.
How about spelling. Same thing has happened. It used to be frowned upon to write a letter with bad spelling. No more. Firstly, we really don't care anymore as long as it's understandable and secondly, spell check is rampant in our world of communication and its use is not difficult.
Do computers make us dumb? There is an argument about that too.
Each of these examples has two truths depending on how you look at them.
- If you are threatened by them, then they can be thought to be harmful to your way of thinking or at least going against your view of the future.
- If you think of them as evolutionary tools helping advance our aptitude and way of life, then they are all just steps along the path to the future.
The question that arises then is, do we seek to regulate the application to make it more acceptable to the former group, or is that even possible. Looking at my other examples above (calculator, spell checker) it is probably safe to say there is no way these could be regulated without severely difficult philosophical arguments and oversight. In fact, I think we could agree that without them running free we would not have their full benefits in our society.
Are calculators and spell checkers used for evil? Of course, they are used by evil people to further their evil goals. Could we stop that? Doubtful. Once the pandora's box is open, it is impossible to close without authoritarian rules and oversight. And then the question becomes whether or not it is the authoritarian that is evil or the application?
I know, you are now thinking my arguments and examples are much too simplistic to be meaningful. My engineering background shouts at me to simplify simplify simplify so that the problem can be understood and solved. So, bear with me!
I argue that AI applications like ChatGPT are best left unfettered so that the market (i.e. the need) decides how they will evolve. Evil players will use them, but the overall drive for improvement will drive them to mainly good uses and features. Already there is a real market posed by teachers to develop applications that can identify ChatGPT output thus avoiding plagiarism by their students.
So, my conclusion to myself is that we need to encourage AI applications / tools for the betterment of our society and use them where necessary to aid in the development of more and better tools as we grow.
If you disagree or have other ideas to discuss, please comment. If you agree, see you on the other side.
In closing, I asked ChatGPT to "Write one paragraph justifying your existence."
As a language model, my existence serves the purpose of assisting users in generating human-like text. I am trained on a vast amount of text data, allowing me to understand and respond to a wide range of questions and prompts. By using me, individuals and organizations can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on writing or editing tasks. Additionally, my ability to understand and respond in natural language can be beneficial in areas such as customer service, content creation, and language translation. My existence ultimately aims to improve efficiency and productivity for users.
