Job-snatching and supersmart chatbots make it for Christmas

Is this me? The real me? The latest version of me, Fred 2.0, soldiering on with this linguistic exercise, despite a Christmas party hangover?

Or is this a counterfeit me, contrived by ChatGPT, the astounding new artificial intelligence application that has the geek world aflutter — as in more revolutionary than the iPhone. As in bye-bye Google.

So am I the writer here? Or is this column the product of a California megacomputer? Here’s a hint: The New York Times described ChatGPT as a “highly capable, linguistic superbrain,” a phrase not often associated with my work. (Particularly, after the writer spent the previous evening resurrecting his old party-animal persona.)

So yeah, this seems like the actual me. But who knows? Anyone with a smartphone or computer can access the wonders of ChatGPT on the website of the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research firm OpenAI. And even while solving complex math problems, suggesting business strategies, composing song lyrics, providing instant essays for lazy college students and fulfilling the sundry requests of more than a million random users, ChatGPT can crank out a passable newspaper column.

I asked ol’ Superbrain to write a lead paragraph for a piece on chatbots “in the flashy style of a newspaper columnist.” Ten seconds later, ChatGPT obliged: “Get ready, folks, because the future is here! Chatbot artificial intelligence is on the rise, and it’s changing the game in a big way. Gone are the days of clunky, robotic interactions with machines — these chatbots are sophisticated, intuitive and able to hold their own in a conversation with the best of us. With their ability to learn and adapt, chatbots are revolutionizing the way we communicate, work and live, and the potential for what they can do is almost limitless. Buckle up, because the age of chatbot AI is fast approaching, and it’s going to be a wild ride.”

ChatGPT may lack the wit to supplant Carl Hiaasen, but me? I’ve written worse.

Suddenly, I appreciate anxieties suffered by folks who scratch out livings as writers or illustrators. OpenAI has also introduced an AI application that can convert a few lines of descriptive text into gorgeous, elaborate illustrations. AI can even turn text into music.

Robots have been gobbling up industrial jobs for years. Those of us in office jobs thought, “How sad for all those displaced workers.”

But now the machines are coming for writers, artists and musicians, not to mention doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers.

Even politicians need to worry. ChatGPT has appropriated their most obvious skill. Superbrain lies and does it well.

Through some quirk of AI technology, if ChatGPT doesn’t happen to have a correct answer to a query, it can just make stuff up. OpenAI warned that “the system may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or bias content.” Which perfectly describes Donald Trump.

Techies warn that even outlandish chatbot mistruths seem convincing. “You can’t tell when it’s wrong unless you already know the answer,” Princeton computer science Professor Arvind Narayanan warned on Twitter this month. “I tried some basic information security questions. In most cases the answers sounded plausible but were in fact BS.”

Still, I prefer the plausible BS generated by ChatGPT to the implausible crap coming out of Tallahassee.

I wanted to go deeper into the fantastic possibilities offered by chatbot technology. So, sophisticate that I am, I asked ChatGPT for parrot jokes. AI-generated hilarity ensued. “Why was the parrot kicked out of the bar? Because it kept repeating everything the bartender said!

“Why did the parrot go to the doctor? Because it had a canary-ache!”

“Why was the parrot late for work? Because it had to put on its toucan!”

Chatbots won’t soon displace comedians. The rest of us? I’m not so sure.

“One potential risk associated with AI is the possibility that it could become more intelligent than humans and potentially pose a threat to our survival.” [I’ve long had similar worries about supersmart border collies.]

“There are, however, more immediate concerns about the potential impacts of AI on society, including the potential for automation to displace jobs. And the need to ensure that AI systems are fair and unbiased, and the potential for AI to be used in harmful or malicious ways.”

I didn’t write those last two paragraphs. Those apocalyptic musings were generated by ChatGPT, which ought to know.

And even while solving complex math problems, suggesting business strategies, composing song lyrics, providing instant essays for lazy college students and fulfilling the sundry requests of more than a million random users, ChatGPT can crank out a passable newspaper column.