AI, ML The New Disruptors

 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’.