Tuesday, April 4, 2023

AI (Real or Artificial) Intelligence?



 Let's talk about chatGPT.  The tech dept. at the school system some of us work for, sent out an email as a warning for the use and misuse of chatGPT by some of our students.  If you're not aware chatGPT is an AI (artificial intelligence) bot that generates fairly well written information that students can submit as homework, essays, and or pass off as research material.  It's spooky.

So, being the curious type, I entered the chatGPT realm, logged in and began asking a whole plethora of questions to see if I could trip up the bot.  So far, nada.  Who ever is responsible for creating this devious software is a virtual genius.   It generates what looks like some pretty well thought out answers that are readable, not to wordy, uses easy to understand language that looks like it's thinking on the standard reading level of the average US. citizen, and it comes up with darn good material.  If I plug a question in that it cannot understand or if my inquiry is vague, the chatGPT will explain to you that it can not understand, find, and will suggest you fix your inquiry or check your spelling.  Incredible...  

About 6 months ago my friend, Paul, another Taiji guy from Europe sent me a paper that was well written, inciteful, and way off topic.  So what do I do, I send him a response that sounded like I was being just darn evil.  I had no idea at the time that the paper was generated by a chatGPT type of program.  Silly me... Fool me once, fool me twice, no third strike.  But, that was my bad, now I am aware. 

So, if you are a teacher, a parent of school age kiddos, a paraprofessional, or a regular journalist type such as we bloggers, beware of chatGPT. For right around the corner is SkyNet, and for those of us familiar with Arnold's movie, that didn't turn out so good.

Peace and Balance,

John

2 comments:

  1. I've been staying away from those critters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, They are becoming a real possible problem in secondary schools as well as colleges right now. The software is sophisticated enough that the writing looks fairly legit. Add a few citations, and google an appropriate website and it becomes very hard to tell the difference between the machine, or the student. One of the tell tale signs is if student X, who has the writing skills of a gnat suddenly hands in a paper that looks like college level writing, well then something is up...

      Delete