ChatGPT and You - Is the Sky (Net) Falling on Our Heads?
One of my most rewatched movies of all time is Terminator 2, and my mum can attest to that fact. I've probably seen the movie a hundred times or more. In fact, every time I catch a rerun of T2 on TV groans registering eight on the Richter scale rumble through the house.
By now, everyone knows the premise of Terminator and its clones - humans make AI, and AI unmakes humans. I've always found the slow but sure march toward impending doom of the now cliche storyline that something we created surpasses us in all facets, including genocide, fascinating.
But T2 stood out for me because the one weapon that the AI wielded, a T-800 series Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger limited edition, is used against it and ends up saving the day for the humans.
The questions right now on everyone's mind are -
Is AI winning?
Who is going to save us?
Will our overlords give us free ice cream while using us as their laptop batteries?
Is AI Going to Take All Our Jobs?
As AIs rise in complexity, everyone is understandably worried about what it means for humanity. Now that is a string of words that I never thought I'd write in my lifetime.
To be honest, we kinda always knew that there would be an AI that could be "smart." But we sort of kept kicking the can down the road, and eventually, that can has now metamorphosized into a towering monolith of tangled wires and scary lights that can spit out your summary of a book with the bars of Kendrick Lamar. (I actually did try this, and it's epic! You can find it at the end of the article.)
This is a nice segue to one of the most talked about AIs in recent times, ChatGPT.
To say that ChatGPT has been in the news since December of last year would be the understatement of 2023, and it's only March.
There are thousands of videos and articles of how people can get it to do things ranging from writing a poem about their player character on a videogame (trying to look away awkwardly) to coding their own chatbot.
This AI can seemingly do anything the user can ask it to. The possibilities, pardon the cliche, are endless.
But can it compete with humans in the commercial space? How will other competitors in the market handle this and other AIs coming after it? Is this sentient code spaghetti going to take all our collective lunch money and bring a whimpering, anti-climatic end to us all? Is the sky falling on our heads?
So, let's take a deeper look into what ChatGPT actually is and details about where you can group together to form The Resistance.
What is ChatGPT?
Sun Tzu said, "Know the enemy; know yourself." I won't pretend to understand what is under the hood of this, shit's complicated. But with the power of abstraction, it would seem the ChatGPT is more of a content aggregator, powered by machine learning, pulling trillions of data points from all over the internet.
In its own words, "ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that uses deep learning to generate human-like text responses. It's trained on a massive amount of text data and can generate text for a wide range of tasks such as conversation, summarization, question answering, and more." It does read well, doesn't it?
And just to be clear, I never said that it sucked. The discussion here is about how commercially viable it will be - will it take away jobs from people?
Here are a few reasons why I think it won't, at least not yet.
Complex Decision Making
Most people at their jobs today make complex decisions. I say most because the only complex decision my ex-boss made was probably the time he wanted coffee delivered to his cabin by that pretty HR. ChatGPT generates responses based on patterns and data available to it. It can answer straightforward questions, and that's about it.
While it does provide utility, it falls short when you need it to make a business decision. Let's consider a scenario, medical diagnosis. Just typing in the patient's symptoms will get you a WebMD-like response. It might be accurate, but it doesn't have the tools to understand or comprehend the person's medical history, lifestyle choices, and other relevant information.
It will end up giving you a diagnosis that is incomplete at best or getting you embroiled in a lawsuit at worst. This is a risk I believe people won't take, but considering we all paid up and queued up for an untested vaccine just a couple of years ago, not so sure.
By my scientific and well-researched estimates, Google, the company, not the verb, is worth a gazillion monies. And one of the most important reasons they got there is their search technology. Or, to be more specific, monetization of user search data.
If I were a user, would I get my results on a search engine that just spits out a few results at me and makes me (ugh) choose the right one from a list like some pleb, OR would I like my answer gift-wrapped and delivered to me in smooth, comforting, pseudo-human text? The answer, even though it's a little scary, is the latter.
Are they going to take the advent of ChatGPT lying Googling down? I can think of a gazillion reasons they won't. The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ecosystem is a huge source of revenue for Google, second to only perhaps harvesting our information and selling it to Martians who are secretly among us.
In Q3 2022, $39.5 billion dollars (57.2%) of Google revenue came from search ads. That is not a trifling number, and you can be pretty sure they'll bring out their guns… er, nerds to defend it. Those at the frontlines, like SEO analysts and writers, know that the war has already begun between the algorithms.
Being a writer, I know first-hand that there are algorithms that are designed to identify GPT-3 language models. Once they are identified, Google will crack down on their rankings and ensure that they never see the light of the first page of search results again. In fact, they've explicitly stated AI content is against their guidelines.
So, if you thought you could keep pumping out content with just ChatGPT to rank your website, take this as a warning.
Humans
From other people's and my own experiences, I think humans are far more competitive than we give ourselves credit for. Take something I have a decade's worth of experience in, writing. I've been using AI-assisted writing tools for a long time. For me, ChatGPT has never been a serious competition compared to what I can put out on a daily basis.
Anyway, let's make ChatGPT write something -
As you can see, the output has the dreaded... sameness, like it was made on an assembly line. But of course, you'd expect this kind of output since there's no way it will have enough information to ensure one doesn't sound as same as the other. And, for argument's sake, the questions are pretty similar too.
But this simplistic example aside, with longer content pieces, the AI lacks context to create engaging content. From a purely informative standpoint, it isn't wrong, but when you're writing for people, it becomes boring to them and fast.
The AI doesn't have the rhythm, the ebb and flow of content that makes reading a piece exciting. Plus, a sense of humor, even as bad as mine, makes wading through longer content pieces bearable for the average reader.
ChatGPT doesn't have the nuance, timing, and grasp of current events as (some!) people do. I take great pride in saying we can hold our own for now, at least in domains with which we have some degree of expertise.
Here's what I asked my friends from varying backgrounds how ChatGPT would affect their line of work.
Several more of my friends said that ChatGPT would have no tangible effect on their business. They are all from varying backgrounds, from CEOs to marketing managers to programmers to seafarers. While I couldn't harvest WhatsApp screenies from all of them, their thoughts we pretty much the same. Also, another thing that I found was the common denominator between them is that they've all heard of ChatGPT.
In my humble opinion, this is a massive win for tech. Even non-techies have heard of this fantastic, perennially awake, omniscient jumble of code that answers every question we have. This takes me back to the time of email when it first came - nobody used it much (at the start), but everyone knew the premise.
So, What's the Verdict?
Humanity as a collective has always been afraid of change. As creators, we've always feared what our creations would do to us. In the 14th century, people opposed the invention of the printing press because "religious teachings would be undermined by false prophets of fake bibles."
The advent of the telephone during the 19th century created disruption among the masses, who feared it would eliminate the necessity for people to meet each other.
When broadcasting radio and TV signals came along, people worried that it would brainwash everyone. Wait, don't we still do that with 5G? So much for us patting ourselves on the back that we're more evolved today.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that we have always been scared of technology. People should start seeing ChatGPT just as another tool, albeit a revolutionary one, that can help us solve problems quicker. Let's not forget that we are the same people who invented devices that can calculate billions of instructions in a second and made them portable enough to be carried around in unwashed denim pockets.
As a writer, I've been using AI-based writers for a while now, and I'm sure so do other people of my ilk. To the many of us who've used similar applications, this seems like a progression of those applications, but granted, this is indeed a huge step forward. To say that ChatGPT has pushed the envelope when it comes to creating content is like saying Beethoven's Ninth is just another catchy tune.
To me, ChatGPT is a tool we can use to make better stuff and stuff better. Will it take our jobs? As with the introduction of every new technology, there will be a period where we need to catch up to these changes. But there will be new types of employment that will crop up.
Take the example of the invention of cars. People who maintained horses and carriages have now evolved into auto mechanics and body repairers. It also opened up new industries like gasoline stations and auto dealerships. Although it disrupted the horse carriage industry, it opened up new avenues for people willing to evolve.
You can draw parallels to several examples in our short but eventful history. So, if you were to ask me if ChatGPT would take some existing jobs from us? The answer is yes. But will it also create new opportunities for humanity as a whole? Also, yes.
Do let me know about your experience with ChatGPT. Also, if you can, share some creative prompts you've tried using the platform.
Here’s mine -
Prompt - write the tale of two cities in the style of Kendrick Lamar
Result -
Verse 1:
Listen up y'all, I got a story to tell,
'Bout a tale of two cities, you know it well,
One was London, the other was Paris,
Both with their own struggles, it was apparent.
Chorus:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
Two cities, two fates intertwined,
From revolution to redemption,
This story will leave you in suspension.
Verse 2:
The rich and the poor, they lived side by side,
But their lives were so different, it couldn't be denied,
The French Revolution was on the rise,
Bloodshed and chaos before their very eyes.
Chorus:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
Two cities, two fates intertwined,
From revolution to redemption,
This story will leave you in suspension.
Verse 3:
Amidst the chaos, there were stories to tell,
Of love and sacrifice, they knew it well,
Lucie and Charles, their love was true,
But fate had other plans, they had no clue.
Chorus:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
Two cities, two fates intertwined,
From revolution to redemption,
This story will leave you in suspension.
Verse 4:
The sacrifice was made, the redemption complete,
The tale of two cities, so bittersweet,
Their lives were changed forevermore,
Their love and sacrifice, we can't ignore.
Chorus:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
Two cities, two fates intertwined,
From revolution to redemption,
This story will leave you in suspension.
P.S. If you’re wondering about what the heck the title means - the antagonist AI in the Terminator movie is named Skynet. That, combined with the title of a book by Sidney Sheldon, inspired my obviously clever title - all 100% human-made. Yep, if the AI wants my job, it's going to have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
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