Where is AI taking us?

chatgpt
(Photo: ChatGPT)
chatgpt

Jean-Claude Elias

The writer is a computer engineer and a classically trained pianist and guitarist. He has been regularly writing IT articles, reviewing music albums, and covering concerts for more than 30 years.

Unless you happen to be living on a remote island or as a recluse in the desert, you must be aware of the buzz created by ChatGPT since the beginning of the year. Chances are you have even tried the system and seen the magic-like tricks it does. And yes, viral is the word that best describes its global effect.اضافة اعلان

The AI-based free online tool can converse, begin a dialog, and listen to your spoken or written requests and questions and then generate near-perfect answers, essays, letters, emails, documentation, and text of any kind. Its syntax, spelling, and grammar are flawless.

Just a few days after almost every human being on earth heard about ChatGPT in early January, the servers of OpenAI, the company that made the product, were flooded with requests by users, to the point that today it is hard to get a reply from the system if one only has a free account. The company is working on trying to meet the demand.

It would take too long to describe in detail the capabilities of ChatGPT. Suffice to say that the AI tool has raised a serious alarm in educational institutions at all levels — universities in particular — and educators are extra-vigilant not to allow internet-connected devices of any kind during live examinations to ensure the answers are actually being written by the students and not by ChatGPT. As for controlling how homework is done, there seems to be no real solution in sight.

AI advances As extraordinary and futuristic as ChatGPT may be, it is just another system brought to us by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the fact that systems can now tap into the massive amount of digital information available in the world and in the cloud. This is an essential ingredient in the AI recipe.
AI is being injected into most software applications, even in those that are less spectacular at first sight.
Dall-E 2 and Canvas, among others, took the world by storm last year, with their ability to generate photo-realistic, customizable landscapes, graphics, and artistic or architectural models almost instantly based on a few descriptive words. Here, too, it was the raw power of AI that was at the core of the systems.

Runway is another new AI-based tool that generates stunning animated graphic contents, requesting very little input and effort from the user. Some say it may create entire movies in the future, almost by itself.

AI is being injected into most software applications, even in those that are less spectacular at first sight. This includes banking and finance, for example, where the optimization of investments is being “advised” by AI-based software. There is hardly a field that is not affected — positively, most of the time.

Real risks Self-driving vehicles are a particularly remarkable example of AI application. This technology is supposed to, and it almost certainly will, help avoid road accidents that human beings would not otherwise be able to avoid.
AI-based systems are here to stay and will continue to evolve and expand, without a doubt.
But then again, if OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT themselves, warn you that their system “may occasionally generate incorrect information”, would you feel safe being in a self-driving car that “may occasionally go the wrong way” and cause serious injuries? Or make a risky investment just because an AI algorithm advised you to do so?

The long-awaited robot age AI is fascinating, this is a certainty. After about seven decades of the traditional computing that started in the mid-1950s, we have entered the age of intelligent computing, of robotics, that pundits, scientists, and writers of science-fiction novels have been predicting and waiting for to come true.

AI-based systems are here to stay and will continue to evolve and expand, without a doubt. As limited and as imperfect as they may sometime be, their weaknesses and their shortcomings will be less than those of human beings, even if the consequences could sometime be tragic.

This story was contributed to Jordan News by a real human writer, not by ChatGPT.


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