To Embrace or Reject Chat GPT, That is The Question

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

In 7 days (!!!!!) of polishing this article, ChatGPT evolved to another superior level - ChatGPT-4, while Microsoft Office presented features very similar to ChatGPT abilities and this is just the beginning of 2023! Still think ChatGPT is a fling?

ChatGPT is a part of our reality and let's rather get acquainted with our "enemy" so we can turn it into an ally. We use technology to relieve ourselves from tedious tasks every day - automatic ice cube makers in the refrigerators; Siri calling people from our phonebook and sending lunch invitations; Alexa playing our favorite tune while searching high and low for simple dinner recipes based on the ingredients we have in our pantry; Amazon employing robots so we can get our packages in a few hours from placing an order; robotic vacuum-cleaners cleaning our households autonomously by using our apartment's blueprints... The same way this technology is making our livelihoods easier for us, so will ChatGPT and time came to embrace the inevitable in stead of fighting it. Disclaimer: my home is remaining as stupid as it gets, I can dim the lights myself, make my own ice cubes and press play to listen to music. Last thing I need is a Nigerian prince blocking my stove until I pay him ransom so I can boil eggs. Yes, your appliances are hackable if they're online!

A Peak Into the Future

People were always trying to get a grasp of what tomorrow will be like. At the turn of the century, in year 1900, German chocolate factory Hildebrand's made a series of postcards depicting the world in a 100 years. Obviously, it was a miss, but the intention was correct - mankind is always looking for ways to make work and life simpler; otherwise, cattle would still be plowing our fields and we'd ride around on horses and donkeys. Imagine a time when utilizing animals was a massive spring forward and compare it to today. While Hildebrand's didn't do well in figuring out the tomorrow, Star Trek in 1970s predicted, for instance, cordless phones. Today we must prepare for technology making quantum leaps several times in a decade. I believe ChatGPT is a sign of a major change ahead. The biggest transformations will happen, in my opinion, at schools and colleges and at our workplaces. Before we decide to shut off our brains indefinitely, we must keep around some of the critical skills we acquired because ChatGPT is not perfect in weeding out good information from bad and its software can be manipulated.

Education and Chat GPT

The future of schooling will go through quite a renaissance. I believe every child at least once wondered why they are forced to go to school, while us adults take it as a given. Global educational systems do differ one from another, but pupils and students have a lot in common and looking for curves and shortcuts is innate to them all. ChatGPT is the lazy student's dream come true. Yes, teachers and professors will install plagiarism checkers and machine language detectors to their computers, but those programs can be tricked and overridden. Is the solution to entirely eliminate homework? The Finns have done it ages ago and their pupils are scoring highly across the board. ChatGPT summarizes lessons for us and that is worrying because it's taking away valuable thought processes that build and train young minds. Future generations could be trading off their thinking abilities for a shortcut to a better grade.

Colleges are facing another challenge. Higher education, unlike elementary, is not obligatory. We were told if we study hard and get good grades we will be able to advance in life. Some educational programs do enable stellar careers, while other degrees are simply useless and students would have benefited more in life if they began working right after high school. I have hard time imagining ChatGPT replacing law, engineering or medical colleges, but every other degree is in a serious peril of vanishing. P.S. - I saw ChatGPT software come up with a perfectly written lawsuit!

One of the worst case scenarios for higher education

Classes could be recorded, put into Chat GPT and we can get minutes, highlights and studying material in just a blink of an eye without us having to be present at aforementioned classes. Imagine lectures being secretly taped by attending students (every cell phone can be a recording machine), and then distributed to people who aren't even enrolled. You may get Ivy League education (technically) for free! USA has the the best and the most expensive world's colleges and this could be a leeway for students to minimize their expenses if they decide to capitalize on the recorded material. Of course, you can get the knowledge for free or for a smaller price, but not the diploma if you're not signed up officially, so the actual danger does not lie there. I think no college or a stellar professor wants to reveal their teaching techniques that can be used by competition or for more devious purposes. Why was it not done yet, you might wonder? It was too complicated, now it can all be done in a few clicks with a help of a free and amazingly swift software. Look at some the most successful social networks influencers, a lot of them are snake oil salesmen. They claim to be (without any actual credentials or diplomas) investors, psychology gurus, life coaches... My personal maxim is to not judge a person by their education or occupation. If you think otherwise, life tends to humble you rapidly. I do, however, have a lot against nicely dressed fraudsters and they could now get access to data that will make them sound substantiated. No college in the world wants their name smeared or their educational program used for free, by charlatans.

Long ago, colleges introduced distance learning and online degrees that was seen as a novelty and traditional enrollments did not end. We're faced now with a software that can summarize educational videos, highlight the most notable parts of books and teach us about any topic. Will online degrees become redundant and colleges altogether? With the exception of engineering, medical and law programs, I am not sure other degrees are not in jeopardy of going extinct.

It's a completely different story when it comes to high school and elementary school education. Bill Gates said he didn't permit his children to use smartphones as they were growing up and neither did late Steve Jobs, the father of iphone and ipad. Elon Musk in a recent interview said he didn't limit social network usage to his kids, but he regrets it. Can ChatGPT be a trap for children in their most vulnerable brain development age? Is this software going to rob them of their analytical skills, the power to bring their own conclusions from information presented to them?

Workplace and ChatGPT

Yes, layoffs are coming. Should we worry? Anytime in history downsizings came, new occupations emerged. Indeed, ChatGPT can make business plans for us, advertising tactics, ideas for job improvements, but it cannot execute them, at least not just yet. For instance, ChatGPT may come up with our social networks strategy, but we will have to make sense of it and publish it. The AI may provide the framework, but us humans still have to be the ones to do the footwork. On the other hand, simple tasks performed by workforce around the globe will be replaced by software scripts. I spent a brief amount of my career in the technological field. Workplaces there are so stressful, dramatic and unpredictable, I'll just give you an example. Imagine a job where your knowledge becomes obsolete roughly every six months and you have to learn about your work all over again, otherwise you're useless to your company and clients. The learning is not compensated by your company because it's expected of you to perform your duties, so you spend sleepless nights mastering the software/hardware updates. Did you see videos of how Facebook, Google and Twitter are pampering their employees? In reality, they expect of their workers to stay on the job 24/7 and as far as I have read, they are firing tens of thousands of people as we speak because even the tech billionaires cannot afford coddling their workforce if there is a software ready to perform same tasks FOR FREE. These are technological giants and they are the ones launching trends the rest of us have to adopt. They have the funds to collect the best global talent and weed them out as they see fit. Many of us leave college and high school expecting to spend the rest of our careers on autopilot, but that is a relict of the past. The learning never ends. ChatGPT will make some work processes easier, but it will jeopardize our jobs of today.

What Does the Truth Represent to ChatGPT?

Completely unconnectedly, I stumbled upon a recent article written by Noam Chomsky for The New York Times with the title: The False Promise of ChatGPT. This new AI software is becoming a hot topic of philosophical discussions and I am glad it is, the world's governments should get included as soon as possible as well. Mr. Chomsky and I have a very similar reasoning, if garbage is fed into the machine, it will return garbage to us as a result. Data we pour into the AI is recited to us as the ultimate truth. If you were ever googling for information, you had to navigate through a forest of useless and false data in order to make your own conclusions based on credible sources and the truth. The googling process now is all done by ChatGPT, we don't have to search the world wide web in the quest for answers anymore, we just vocalize our question to Chat GPT, it searches the sources for us and comes up with an answer. How will we know this is correct, usable, true? The AI doesn't reveal its sources to us. My worry is, the pre-fed garbage will be packed up with plenty of facts that will be indistinguishable in the cacophony delivered to our screens as the final product.

To chat or not to chat?

Humanity is advancing, but let's not throw away all our previously acquired knowledge. Don't neutralize your brain and replace it with a computer. Once in a while, read a cookbook and come up with your own dinner, without Alexa. New technology may sound intimidating, but we are still the ones pulling the strings, least we can do is to know the technology inside-out and use it just like in the past we were using manual and animal power in farming. We'll be in trouble if the technology ever starts utilizing humans like humans used oxen, but let's leave those scenarios to Terminator sequels. If your computer is acting up, unplug it, you are stil in charge!