From recipes to essay in seconds: Why ChatGPT is causing a frenzy
MANILA, Philippines — Is it the dawn of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) world?
AI has been a curious subject brought to mainstream thanks to Haley Joel Osment's movie with the same name back in 2001, but its recent development has people wondering: Are we speeding toward an age where even a recipe or the more personal essays can be "written" in just seconds with just a prompt for the AI to work on?
AI research lab OpenAI released ChatGPT in November last year, and it has managed to raise concerns from journalism to the education sector.
Even one of OpenAI's co-founders, Elon Musk, has been going gaga about "woke AI."
The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
Having a bit of AI existential angst today
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2023
ChatGPT uses large language models (or LLM), a part of a field known as generative AI that also includes the capacity to execute images, designs or programming code almost instantaneously upon a simple request.
With its makers describing it as a model that "interacts in a conversational way that makes it possible to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests," ChatGPT sounds like the straight A student that sidelines as the ghostwriter for dozens of term papers for a couple of hundred bucks.
ChatGPT, however, has "guardrails" in place that prevent users from using it for activities that cause harm such as hateful or violent content or messaging; illegal activities; child sex abuse material; adult content and political campaigning, among others.
Some Twitter users also shared their experiences with the chatbot, that can be accessed with its simpler version via signing up with OpenAI's website.
My uncle who is a professor at a university asked ChatGPT if his students’ work was generated by ChatGPT. This is what happened: pic.twitter.com/6cghoqDIaE
— tamarciment (@tamarciment) February 28, 2023
An executive at German media giant Axel Springer warned that there will be significant reductions in the media, particularly journalists.
"Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was –- or simply replace it," Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner said in an internal letter to employees seen by AFP.
Doepfner said that media outlets can still fight off the domination of AI with exclusive news and original commentaries and features.
Investigative journalism, personality driven features and entertainment coverage were becoming "increasingly important" for the media business, Doepfner said.
Technology news site The Information on February 27 reported that Musk has been tapping AI researchers to develop an alternative to ChatGPT.
Apart from Musk's reported alternative chatbot, Meta is also coming up with its own AI called LLaMA, as a "smaller, more performant" model designed to "help researchers advance their work."
Google is also reported to release its own language AI called Bard. — With reports from AFP
