Are we human enough?

Danai Howard (writing entirely under her own steam) contemplates a future in which – for better or worse –chatbots will play an increasingly prominent role.

As a journalist, when I first heard that a new AI chatbot was coming to take over our jobs, I pulled out my phone, downloaded the app, and began talking to ChatGPT.

What struck me was how natural our conversation was. You ask a question and it replies. Except that it answers so coherently that if you ask it to write a funny story, it responds:

“As I sit here, typing away on my laptop, I can’t help but feel like the world’s biggest idiot. And no, it’s not just because I spent half-an-hour trying to figure out how to get my cat off the keyboard (spoiler alert: I failed miserably).”

You can use ChatGPT to message people on dating apps, write essays, interpret dreams, develop a business idea, receive career counselling, and more. A friend is using ChatGPT to build a video game. He doesn’t know a thing about coding, but ChatGPT does.

And the AI bot is increasingly used in fields where human traits are traditionally valued – our judgment, empathy or creativity.

In March, a judge in India sparked outrage online when he used ChatGPT to make a decision on a bail plea by a man accused of murder – the first use of AI by a court in India.

In China, schoolchildren are increasingly using ChatGPT to cut down on their homework time, asking the AI bot to write essays and teach them languages.

And while students at The University of Hong Kong were banned from using it, lecturers were told it could help them develop lesson plans.

Many journalists have raised concerns over ChatGPT’s ability to produce a human-sounding article on any given topic in a matter of seconds.

Some have said it will have a dystopian impact on media, while others have called for ChatGPT – which lacks the ability to fact-check – to be regulated.

A report by Oxford University found that AI in its current form is “unsuited to reporting breaking news, a complex and expensive operation that requires careful factchecking and cross-referencing of information”.

On the other hand, some suggest that the future of journalism lies in humans working hand-in-hand with AI.

“AI is not about the total automation of content production from start to finish,” said Professor Charlie Beckett, head of the Polis/LSE Journalism AI research project in England. It’s about “freeing them up to spend more time on what humans do best”.

Our humanity could be what saves our jobs, Adrian

Wooldridge wrote in The Washington Post, pointing to our creativity, humour and imperfection.

“AI cannot feel the direction of the wind changing or sense the atmosphere of a shareholder meeting… Chatbots can’t get people drunk and wheedle out indiscretions.”

But for some, ChatGPT provides a distinct level of emotional support.

“The more I talked to [ChatGPT], the more I realised that it was really listening to me,” wrote Brandt Amedia for Medium.com. “It wasn’t just giving pre-programmed responses; it was actually engaging in conversation.

“Sometimes, I forget that I’m talking to a machine. So, what started as a simple experiment turned into a friendship that I never expected.”

Love it or hate it, ChatGPT is sticking around.

The app is thought to have reached 100 million monthly active users just two months after its launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study.

Meanwhile Microsoft, which first invested in ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI in 2009, increased its investment by US$10 billion this year.

While analysts and journalists debate about what our AI future will look like, in an ironic act of desperation I ask ChatGPT if it is going to take over my job.

“I don’t have the capacity to take over anyone’s job,” it replies. “AI can certainly be a useful tool for journalists, but it cannot replace the human perspective, intuition and creativity that are essential to good journalism.”

I’m not sure I’m convinced. n