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We Need to Chat About ChatGPT

The future is now, people, and The Unreliable Guide is not at all sure about it. Like me, you’ve probably just about got your head around the fact that the latest generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT use natural language processing to create freakishly human conversational dialogue.

Simple chatbots have been answering questions about delivery times, etc. for years, but these new AI chatbots interact with you on a much more sophisticated level. They have the entire internet to draw upon and they learn from you while you chat.

If you think this sounds like the start to a dystopian movie, you’re not alone. Even AI experts, plus investors like Elon Musk, believe we should put this tech on hold for a while so we can evaluate its potential. But for now, never fear, The Unreliable Guide is here with some tips and some tricks to keep you safe in this brave new world.

The Allure of Laziness

I’m as lazy as the next person, and using generative AI like ChatGPT is temptingly easy. Put in the right prompt and within seconds it will write you a poem about pink cats, a short story in the style of Tim Winton, or offer up a simple, bullet point summary of Einstein’s theory of relativity. As the tech improves, writers like me could be out of a job, but currently, while these chatbots always respond with the greatest confidence, they sometimes get the answer hilariously wrong. I asked ChatGPT to tell me some of its recent mistakes and they ranged from the assertion that an octopus has six legs, to naming George Orwell’s iconic novel 1989. These mistakes are an issue for lazy students who think AI can successfully do their homework for them. Apparently, approximately 30 per cent of university students are already using AI to write their essays, with 60 per cent stating they see no issue in using the technology.

But is that a problem? If you check your facts, an interface like ChatGPT is a great tool to improve understanding and fluency. UK professor Mike Sharples believes the technology “could become a gift for student cheats, or a powerful teaching assistant, or a tool for creativity.” The trouble is, right now we have no idea which.

Who Can You Trust?

Lazy students are one thing, but there is a far darker side to this technology. We have no firm idea of where it’s taking us, and the law is hopelessly behind. Generative AI is already being used to create highly believable deep fakes. A picture of the Pope in a puffer jacket is funny, but what if hackers stole your image, generated a porn clip and sent it to all your contacts?

Hany Farid, professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information believes, “It’s just a matter of time” until “there’s a website where you can say, ‘Create me a video of Joe Biden saying X’.” That video could allow the orange peril we know as Trump to get back into office. Worse still, once we all know how easy it is to create fake images, audio and video, we aren’t going to believe any legitimate news. Which, as Farid points out, “provides a really useful excuse if something inconvenient comes out featuring you. You can dismiss it as fake.”

Finally, AI is here to stay. How it will change our world and our minds is hard to say, but we need to be aware of it’s potential. Are we, as some argue, programming ourselves out of the future?

Farid sums up the current issue neatly: “You can’t release a product and hope it doesn’t kill your customer. But with software, we’re like, ‘This doesn’t really work, but let’s see what happens when we release it to billions of people.’” Only time will tell.