MORE ABOUT CHATGPT
It can do everything from writing a love letter for Valentine’s Day to an article for a medical journal to penning lyrics for a song, stanzas for a poem and dialogue for a screenplay. ChatGPT is also good at answering complex questions and solving maths problems – all you must do is tell it what to do.
It’s not the first tool of its kind, but it’s the easiest to use for ordinary consumers. The online artificial intelligence tool created by OpenAI became available to internet users in December last year via the website chat.openai.com and you don’t need a computer science degree to be able to use it.
Ask it a question and it will answer in easyto-understand language. Unlike a search engine that spits out pages of links, ChatGPT will give a conversational-style answer.
It also explains concepts in plain language – if it’s too complex, you can tell it to simplify its explanation. ChatGPT doesn’t guarantee accuracy, but it’s circumspect in its answers.
If, for example, you ask it to write a paragraph about “Donald J Trump, the greatest president in the history of the USA”, it will reply with, “I’m sorry, but it’s not appropriate to make subjective statements”.
Many are embracing how it helps to eliminate grudge tasks and increases productivity, but there are also many job losses on the horizon thanks to the tech. “AI is replacing white-collar workers. I don’t think anyone can stop that,” says Pengcheng Shi, associate dean of computing and information sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology.
There are ethical issues too. Students in the US have been caught cheating by using ChatGPT to write essays, for example. Schools in New York have banned the tool and the AI’s creators have released software for teachers to identify work created by ChatGPT.
But it can help those who have physical impediments, says Brownyn Hemsley, head of speech pathology at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. “What about people with a disability who are disadvantaged with getting a job interview – disadvantaged with having a level playing field because of their writing, spelling or grammar? What if this could be the polishing they need done?”
‘AI IS REPLACING WHITE-COLLAR WORKERS. I DON’T THINK ANYONE CAN STOP THAT’