AI – this is your future
What a weekend. Normally, I’m the first to bemoan technology. I’m still not convinced the world is a happier, kinder or a simpler place to live since the internet.
I’ll never know the answer unless I discover an alternative reality, that is unlikely to say the least. I have, however, along with millions of others, recently been ‘wowed’ by the emergence of this new Artificial Intelligence technology (AI). At first, for many people, it’s an automatic discussion switch-off. It sounds complicated. It certainly is complicated.
However, when you have a go, it’s as simple as using a search engine and a lot more fun. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. The reason is obvious. It allows you to cheat. It’s the technological equivalent of a shortcut. It’s a jump forward in no longer having to think.
In simple terms, you can write in a question, ‘write a one thousand word essay about Romeo and Juliet with the main focus being where they were both from.’
Before your eyes, the essay appears. It removes the searching, checking, copying and pasting. If you have a quick go, the first reaction to it is, ‘if I had this at school
I would have passed everything!’ Sure, the technology is in its infancy but there’s no escaping that it’s the future.
Several states in America have already banned it. One European country is trying to do the same.
A university expert said that the answer could be that anything generated by AI has to have a digital watermark of some sort so you know where it’s come from. I think the horse has bolted on that one. I saw that a selection of headteachers discussing whether schooling will have to switch to more presentation work to fathom out whether children have actually learned the subject or just pressed enter.
Whenever something new appears, it always causes concern, however, this will be a serious step change.
One of the issues is that it keeps improving its answers which means it’s becoming impossible to see whether someone cheated or is in fact a studious pupil who deserves top marks.
When I’m playing around on it, I can’t help but stray into Skynet Terminator Two territory. Watching your computer write back to you has science fiction written all over it.
There’s plenty of concern for originality and plagiarism. Computers don't create answers from scratch. They process what they’re given.
They go out into the world and pinch everyone else’s hard work and then bolt bits together.
When you try it for yourself you can even ask it to write you a three-minute song.
Give the AI a theme, for example, write about the streets of Portsmouth. It's completed in seconds.
I’m not sure who owns the lyrics. At the moment I think you’re good to go. You could make a fortune or at least get a guest slot at Victorious Festival.
The new version of ChatGPT is one that you’ll have to pay monthly for. We all knew that it was going to come down to money eventually. It always does. It’s rumoured that the next generation of this technology will recognise products by shape.
The makers claim you’ll be able to take a photo of the contents of your fridge and it will give you recipe ideas. That sounds great.
Although with my fridge, I think it’s going to struggle with cheese triangles and a can of Sprite. The real game changer will be when your AI fridge decides what ingredients you’ve got and then gets up and cooks it for you.
(Since writing this Google have said they’re not quite sure how AI works, a competition has been ruined by the tech and some news stories have turned out to be AI rather than human. Fortunately you know I wrote is article because of the terrible grammar)