(Image generated with DALL-E 2 using the title of this blog entry as the prompt. Quote is mine)
The word of the conference was to have been “imagine” but all the chat was about ChatBot. The AI chat sensation derailed one presentation after another. Presenters gave up their subject to talk about AI and ChatGPT – not because they were being pestered by a rude press corp, but willingly. anticipating the questions that never came. They had presumed that it was the only thing on the media’s mind. It’s easy to see why. Every day leading up to the conference, they had been showered with article after article in the popular and business media about ChatGPT.
After one presenter volunteered the subject of ChatGPT, a journalist dared to ask how close we were to the dreaded dreaded Singularity, referring to the point at which AI can starts improving itself, quickly becoming smarter than its creators. We, the people, no longer of any use to this super intelligent sentient being, are eliminated.
That’s just science fiction, right?
ChatGPT is the two month-old baby of an San Francisco AI startup no one paid much attention to until Microsoft gave it a $10 billion dollar present. Suddenly, it was the cutest, smartest baby in the world.
But ChatGPT is more like a con artist than a baby. You want to believe what it says because it looks so believable. Its answers are well formed, grammatically correct. Once it takes human form, it will most certainly have an English accent and wear a suit.
Like a con artist, ChatGPT lies. It’s answers to questions were incorrect when it was introduced and continue to be incorrect an alarming number of times. If you are using ChatGPT for research or for engineering information, you had better check every answer.
You would think journalists and engineers, other who pride themselves in truth and accuracy, would consider themselves safe from being made obsolete by such a charlatan.
The technologists move to allay the fears of obsolescence they presume are in the room . Fear is only the first stage in the acceptance of any revolutionary technology. To prove his point, they give an example.
“I asked ChatGPT to generate code for [sophisticated geometry] and it generated perfectly structured code.”
“Did it work?” His colleague asks.
“No. But I fixed it.”
He was trying to show how useful ChatGPT could be, how a developer could have used ChatGPT to get 90% of the way there.
I tried to get ChatGPT to finish this article but I was not nearly as successful.
I guess my job (journalist and engineer) is safe. Mostly. For now.
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