ChatGPT: Here to replace the writers and coders?

A new 'generative' artificial intelligence (AI) tool is in town. And it is quite significant. 

'Generative' AI has created a frenzy among tech enthusiasts twice this year, first with DALL-E in April and now with ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT – an AI language model from OpenAI – has taken the internet by storm garnering over a million users within a week of its release on 30 November.

This AI bot can provide answers to your questions –  being able to write essays and programming codes. It can provide you with travel or gift suggestions, explain physics or even pen out poems.

You can ask questions in our natural language, and in response, the chatbot provides answers that are conversational, similar to how we chat on a messaging app with someone else.

The answers it provides are taken from the vast amounts of information that can be found on the internet. It appears to have decent expertise in domains in which it is trained sufficiently.

Well, it is definitely not capable of replacing all humans yet but it can be creative, and its responses may seem quite authoritative.

Surely, this technology is termed as the new frontier of innovation which is about redefining how we create content – text and image, for instance – and interact with the internet.

But what exactly is meant by generative AI?

Generative AI refers to the application of AI that can create "new" or "creative" content (or material) as opposed to only analysing the data that preexists. At least, it gives a vibe of creativity on part of the AI.

It involves "complex machine-learning models to predict the next word based on previous word sequences, or the next image based on words describing previous images" as explained by HBR.

These models can generate text, images and programming codes.

As soon as the ChatGPT has been made available for the public three weeks ago, forecasts have been made in plenty. Some have written the death certificate of Google, the most used search engine which is almost everyone's gateway to the internet. 

After all, there is no point in browsing through seemingly endless results to find out the information you want, while a ChatGPT offers specific answers to your queries.  

The significant development is that the program is intended to "answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests."

The Chat GPT has been trained on a database containing billions of words in the English language. Its answers derive from that database but are programmed in a way that appears 'creative'.

Elon Musk, the billionaire 'co-founder' of Tesla, and Sam Altman, a former president of Y Combinator launched OpenAI in 2015. Musk has maintained for a long time that AI presents an "existential threat to humanity". The OpenAI project was an attempt to direct AI's development that would help humanity.

In recent times, its pace of progress has brought the company to the centre of attention. Earlier this year, its "generative" text-to-image AI tool DALL-E – which takes text instructions and transforms them into digital artwork – created a worldwide buzz.

Even though billions of dollars are poured into AI systems like ChatGPT, LaMDA, DALL-E and Midjourney.AI, simultaneously worries about their ethical and legal repercussions are on the rise.

But there are important notes to consider as the ethical and legal issues are not specified. People will find themselves swarmed by fake videos, propaganda, misinformation, and harmful and downright wrong information. This also raises questions about copyright, privacy and consent.

In fact, its developer OpenAI has clearly said that users should exercise caution since ChatGPT "may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information."Though ChatGPT is still in its infancy, its impressive feat in writing essays and codes has made some worried about related jobs in the future. Though far-fetch, who knows if the AI tool will not make writers and coders obsolete?

A conversation with ChatGPT

What are the top technological trends to watch for in 2023?

It is difficult to predict specific technological trends that will emerge in 2023, as the field of technology is constantly evolving and new developments can occur unexpectedly. However, some areas that are likely to see significant progress in the near future include:

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning: AI and machine learning technologies are expected to continue to advance, enabling the development of new applications and products that can analyse, learn, and make decisions based on data.

Internet of Things (IoT): The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the growing network of interconnected devices that can communicate and exchange data over the internet. This trend is likely to continue to grow, with more and more devices becoming connected to the internet and able to communicate with each other.

5G and wireless technology: 5G wireless technology is expected to become more widely available in the coming years, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections than previous generations of wireless technology. This will enable the development of new applications and services that require high-speed connectivity.

Should we be worried about artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionise many aspects of our lives and bring significant benefits, but it is important to consider the potential risks and ethical implications as well. Some potential concerns about AI include:

Loss of jobs: As AI and automation technologies become more advanced, they may displace some human jobs, particularly in industries where tasks can be easily automated. This could lead to job loss and economic disruption.

Bias in algorithms: AI systems can be biased if they are trained on biased data. This can lead to unfair or discriminatory outcomes, such as when an AI system is used to make decisions about hiring or lending.

Lack of accountability: AI systems can be difficult to understand and explain, which can make it challenging to hold them accountable when they make mistakes or produce unintended consequences.

It is important to address these concerns as we develop and use AI, through measures such as ensuring that AI systems are trained on diverse and representative data sets, developing accountability and transparency mechanisms, and establishing ethical guidelines for the development and use of AI.

What do professionals think about AI chatbots?

The Business Standard reached out to several professionals in the software, AI and content development sector to discuss the implications of AI chatbots

"The most essential way to think about technology is as a tool, not as a substitute for people"

Sketch: TBS

Shamim Hossain, Software Engineer, Datasoft

ChatGPT can write some codes in various programming languages given instructions. The codes it produces are from the existing codes on the internet. But it cannot solve unique problems yet. Programmers are responsible for more than just developing code. They must also deal with the challenge of transforming concepts into the kinds of solutions that customers want. It is hard for me to think that this AI would be able to successfully recreate a "million-dollar concept" that you have, in exactly the way that you would like it to be. ChatGPT is incredible and has a wide variety of applications. The most essential way to think about technology is as a tool, not as a substitute for people. If you're a developer, you might think of it as an alternative version of GitHub's copilot or Stackoverflow, which may come in useful when you're building a project. 

"For the most part, ChatGPT generated texts are a mish-mash of pre-existing related information"

Sketch: TBS

Wahid Uz Zaman, Freelance Content Writer

The AI tool can write articles or essays based on given questions. ChatGPT-generated text can be used in content and blog writing. For inexperienced readers, it might seem well-written and authoritative. But for the most part, these texts are incoherent and full of wrong information – because these texts are a mish-mash of pre-existing related information. Even if a content writer uses the chatbot's text, he or she needs to fact-check and edit, which will subsequently take a lot of time. By this time, original content can be written. For experimental use, it's okay but reliability is an issue. One cannot rely on it 100% but writers can take hints, and ideas from it. Writing, in my opinion, requires a great deal of human thinking that is appropriate to the context. In any scenario, there would be some kind of appeal to the human imagination and feelings.

Contents produced by "generative" AI are inspired by existing sources – sometimes plagiarised, misleading, stolen and filled with copyright issues"

Sketch: TBS

Mehedi Kabir, AI researcher, Berlin Institute of Technology

I'm very impressed by this state-of-the-art technology. Technology, if employed widely, might have a revolutionary impact on how we experience content on the internet. But still, their real-world applications are not clearly defined. One illustration is that nothing good has come out of deep-fake videos. It depends on why and where we apply these tools. Despite its impressive results of what it does, It is not very clear what are the real-world implications of such a tool. Contents produced by "generative" AI are inspired by existing sources – sometimes plagiarised, misleading, stolen and filled with copyright issues. I don't think it will replace programmers or content writers. Because AI has no judgement, in the real world people use judgement. A parallel form of technology will emerge which will find out if any write-up or image is AI-produced or human-made. To do that at the core we need human intelligence.