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Writer's pictureNate Littell

Chat GPT Is a Cautionary Tale of an AI Infested Future

Updated: Jul 26, 2023

The foundation of human civilization is based upon the core principles of language and speech, something AI is now doing for us.


Chat GPT, within days of its release by artificial intelligence giant “OpenAI”, has become one of the most unique and stunning inventions within modern technology. Its ability to formulate everything from email invitations to college essays with the click of a few buttons has amazed the public, yet simultaneously horrified educators. Not only does it require minimal effort by users to create pages upon pages of what seems legitimate writing, but the service itself is entirely and utterly free. On one hand, while such an innovation in the world of software should be heralded for its advancements, AI’s entire purpose is to replace humans’ need for their own intelligence about a certain subject, and instead give it to a computer in a “no mistake” and “instant response” sort of manner. A calculator is the perfect analogy for this notion as it removes the need for humans to use their energy on simple equations, allowing them to focus on more complicated thoughts in math as a whole. However, this replacement of basic intelligence, while convenient to some extent, poses greater danger than aid to humanity when it comes to the basic needs and skills we’ve survived off of for centuries.


Since the dawn of civilization, communication has been the building block of the essence of invention and general thought. It has allowed for the evolution of society and the many pieces of literary expression that have influenced and shaped culture throughout the years. Without the ability to read, research, and write, humans have little ability to create their own logical thoughts let alone share them with others. However, once the incentive to formulate bodies of writing is diminished thanks to an automatic script robot, so is the need to create original ideas. And this very notion is not only telling of how dismal the future is when a software with such abilities carries no limitations, but it is telling of how greatly the world of AI has and will dominate humans in other fields as well.


Now, to test the viability and advancements of Chat GPT before making such despondent claims, I chose to insert several common demands into its entry box. The response I got was nothing short of fascinating.


The first request I made was to write me a brief essay listing 10 different examples of leadership traits. Upon clicking the send button, the software hesitated for a moment, and then quickly and effortlessly blurted out sentence after sentence of writing. Its incredible ability to generate what would take the average human a good 10-20 minutes astounded me among others. Not only were the sentences it wrote well crafted with no grammatical or spelling issues, but the software was able to generate what seemed original ideas on its own about the topic I had prompted. And while the prompt I gave was pretty simple and common in the world of essay topics, I repeatedly attempted to outwit this resourceful chatbot with longer and more complicated topics, only to be proved dumbfounded time and time again. This begged the question of if AI can effortlessly write essays of any topic and any size, imagine what else it could achieve?


Of course, with such technologies that could easily be used for cheating in essays, many schools and colleges who evaluate students on their writing have taken up several parameters to combat what is known as “Chat GPT cheating”. Some methods include banning the website on school devices, or even inserting the text into programs which detect that AI has written it. However, with an increasing number of users, that is 100 million and counting since its launch in late November, its extensive use could be nearly impossible to fully deter.


Looking forward, the impact of a software that has already grown popular through its inconceivable ability to perform human tasks in seconds will likely not be small. Companies like Google, have already launched their own competitors to seek ground in a growing market of AI inventions like the chat bot. The entire AI industry, which is projected to increase by over 3x in the next 7 years will push the notion of an even more technology-integrated population of consumers. And while all of this might in hindsight sound great for the economy and for the technological industry as well, AI is also on track to displace at least 400 million jobs by 2030 and cause significant occupation category switching to millions of workers.


However, perhaps most devastating, AI has, and is continuing to wipe human culture of its shared interactions. While a great deal of blame for what seems to be an ever more screen focussed population is due to social media and its countless defects, the chatbot and other inventions which deplete the need for thoughtful communication only adds to this. Humanity, as previously stated, is built upon joint conversation and the ability to speak without letting a robot do the work for you. So with an increasingly screen focussed world, communication and therefore brainwork is also being drained.


There’s a big difference between what artificial intelligence brings to the table and what real acumen does. However, with the astonishing capabilities of modern-day AI that continues to boggle the minds of scholars, the line in which artificial thoughts are separated from reality is beginning to blur. AI can not only power little Amazon Alexa machines to run your entire household, but it can masterfully form dialects and pieces of literature that would otherwise have only been possible with the minds of us humans. Therefore, a future in which AI becomes superior in everything from the ability to demonstrate knowledge, to entertaining us based on sloughs of algorithms is not out of the question. In fact, by the track of innovation coders are going on now, AI very much has the capabilities of depleting people of their jobs and replacing us humans in almost every line of work. Sure it's convenient to sit back and allow robots to complete the labors that make up our lives, but in the long run, how beneficial is it to us really?

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