Artificial intelligence is not really new, but the rise of the chat bot has been back in the headlines.
ChatGPT went viral as users hailed its powers, and others decried what it represents.
Launched by OpenAI in November, ChatGPT attracted more than a million users in a short time. It has fans, but its ability to use AI tech to generate conversational online chat, write everything from music to TV scripts, and even create code, has terrified many.
The Chat Bot
The concept isn’t all that new. For some time, we’ve had panels pop up on websites offering customer support, seemingly linking you to a human.
In fact, many were software apps programmed to respond to questions. They had limitations. Many only had stock answers to certain questions, no ability to answer follow-ups, and a lack of conversational style – you knew it was a robot.
This meant they had limited use to website visitors as well as to the businesses behind them – the chat bot would run out of steam and end up directing the inquiry to a member of staff anyway.
ChatGPT is the latest development to address this. Sophisticated AI programming and learning means this chat bot can do much more. Its style is conversational, it develops knowledge so answers can be more responsive, and it admits and learns from mistakes.
The Controversy and Fear
Its power goes way beyond this, though, and that’s what causes the controversy.
ChatGPT can write for you, everything from a job application to an academic essay. It can write jokes and music. It can explain complex subjects. It can code, it can translate (into conversational language), it can even give relationship advice.
Critics say it has become a tool for cheating, letting students generate essays and studies on just about anything with minimal input or research. It enables people to cheat at work.
Those who fear AI development see ChatGPT as proof of the rise of the machines. It replaces an array of ‘human’ schools (teachers, comedians, music, and copywriters, for example).
Eventually, they believe, AI will become so sophisticated that it will learn independence and become sentient, threatening the human race.
Chat Bot Sci-fi
Okay, that’s perhaps taking it too far.
But some genuinely believe AI is a threat to our existence. Look at Bladerunner and The Terminator – these movies, and others, predict a dystopian future where machine learning has helped AI devices develop to the point of either complete integration or actual control.
This fear means some refuse to engage with AI programmes, fearful of assisting the inexorable march to machine dominance by ‘teaching’ the chat bot enemy.
Replacement Timetable
In fact, this fear is nothing new.
When search engines first appeared, offering unlimited access to almost all human knowledge and with the ability to learn from our behaviour to tailor responses better, we knew it was over.
But where exactly is Ask Jeeves now? Has a digital butler taken your place?
It is long gone, replaced by better versions, like the all-dominant Google (another machine entity we fear will end us).
The development of machine learning and more effective chat bot tech is, in fact, a slow process. Each iteration improves on the last, always seeking to make the human experience easier and better.
Fight the Fear
There is no doubt that technology is replacing jobs previously performed by humans. That is hard for those affected, but it is also how civilisation has always been.
The industrial revolution in the UK saw ‘traditional’ jobs replaced by the more efficient machines, driving forward our development.
The advent of AI is the modern take on this. We are developing new machines and tech to make our lives easier and improve efficiency. It will threaten jobs and create new moral dilemmas around cheating, but it will also benefit us.
There is the prospect that machine learning could out-develop human ability, so I understand the fear of Terminator-style subjugation.
So, how do we counter that? Simply, through control.
If we want to ensure AI remains our servant, not our master, we must understand it. Don’t shy away from it; engage, learn, and control. Do the very things we fear the machines will do to us.
Be James Watt, not Ned Ludd…
