I am not using ChatGPT (the site is very busy) to write this article and therein lies a problem.
The Google search engine
was hailed as the most revolutionary software. The search engine will give you
links to any information you search for on the internet. ChatGPT goes a step
further. It will write articles/description for you on the subject you choose
which then can straight away go into your own write-ups with minor changes.
This is spoon feeding
taken to the next level. Google also gives information on any subject you ask
it. But you will have to visit different sites, sift through a lot of data and
then use what is relevant to you. You give this software a subject and it will
give you an article complete in itself. It is presentable and usable. And this
is a problem.
You ask it to write an
essay and it will produce one in no time at all. A student in school can
present it to his teacher without doing any research on the topic. While a
sharp teacher will immediately know if the written essay is written by the student
as the teacher knows the student’s intellectual level, however, the temptation
to do all your homework with the help of ChatGPT will always be there. Future
versions may be able to solve math problems. We already have smart gadgets in
our hands. With intelligent software loaded on them, humans will become dumb
progressively as the gadgets become smarter.
Are we going to become a
dumb race? We are certainly headed in that direction. With intelligent
software, school children will just stop learning the fundamentals. The skill
of thinking which is so fundamental to the survival and progress of the human
race is now in danger. Why think and try to imagine when all that is being done
for you by a smart software? But these skills are very basic and the foundation
of human civilization. If the majority of people lose their power to think what
will happen to human progress?
Machines will get
smarter all the time and take away jobs from humans. This is what happened with
assembly line workers. Clerical and repetitive tasks in offices are being taken
over by smart software. Now programs like ChatGPT will take over some of the
creative work from humans as well.
There are more programs
like ChatGPT in the pipeline which will disrupt the employment market. Text to
image software is being developed. DALL-E, GPT3, Picsart, are some of the new
programs on the market. So the area of human endeavor in general is shrinking,
as a result, even the field of art may undergo a paradigm shift.
New areas may open up
where humans could be employed, but these fields will need highly skilled and
qualified people. Those jobs may not absorb all the available labour.
Experts have been
predicting this for some time now. Education systems the world over will have
to take note of this. It will be challenging to design education systems which
will prepare humans for this onslaught of computers. The tidal wave of
technology may not provide time for adjustments.
Also, the potential to give fake information is huge. The makers of the software can set their own narrative by giving out specific information to users.
Humans will have to take this disruptive progress in their stride. The future generations will be smart enough (as they always are) to adjust to this AI/ML invasion. There is no escaping the disruption. As the Greek philosopher said ‘change is the only constant’.
