Artificial intelligence blurs lines in reality
DEAR EDITOR:
What goes around, comes around. Hollywood writers are caught in their own plot line. Striking members of the American Writers Guild list, among their demands, a provision that bans material created using artificial intelligence. This raises the question, does it really matter who, or what, writes a good story? Would anyone really care if the story or movie is engaging and entertaining?
Purists would say we should care. – They say great art, whether it is writing, music, film, stage, painting, dance, or sculpture is the expression of human emotion, ingenuity and imagination that combines into works of singular beauty and emotional power that suggests a divine-hand – this kind of ethereal distillation can not be replicated by machines.
ChatGPT blurs the line.
Millions have begun testing such tools as ChatGPT, which advocates say can make medical diagnoses, write screenplays, create legal briefs, create new images and debug software.
This raises serious questions about AI and the future nature of work. Any clerical position is threatened. In terms of making medical diagnoses, ChatGPT generated answers judged to be three times as knowledgeable and nine times as empathetic as answers from real physicians.
What does this say about empathy? Is it merely the right collection of words or a unique human gift?
It has been pointed out that in some cases, a truly empathetic response may not involve any words, a moment of silence afforded a grieving person, or a tissue quietly extended to a grieving relative, conveys the message of caring.
Humans learn empathy the hard way, through sorrow, disappointment and loss. Empathy is a innate survival-skill, and grasping the zeitgeist of our time a humangift.
The problem is, ChatGPT confuses our perception of our reality and has the potential of unleashing a host of social troubles.
Demand to fill the content pipeline will only intensify and use of AI is convenient and quicker than the human process.
Book publishers on the look out for new manuscripts need not pay an author to have a best seller. University entry boards already put less weight on written essays in awarding marks. Will artificial intelligence dull human creativity? Jon Peter Christoff, West Kelowna