AI Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (Chat GPT)
Yes, I used cliff notes in school sometimes. Did it help? Maybe it did. Now with the use of Open AI’s chatbot you can shortcut writing poems and just about any didactic articles on many subjects. Yes, this AI is that good. This makes using cliff notes look like child’s play. Chat has a sibling called Instruct GPT which scrubs the internet on a subject and spits out a detailed response. Teachers beware: this AI is disruptive and almost scary.
Mathew Sag, a law professor at Emory said: “There is a saying, an infinite number of monkeys will eventually give you Shakespeare.” Mathew Sag studies the implications of using Chat GPT, other large language models, and copyright laws. Sag and others maintain there is a difference between the way large language models write and the way humans write. Chat GPT and other AI bots can aggregate massive amounts of data on a subject and make predictions and string language together in a meaningful way. They tap into a large amount of information and vocabulary. The technology uses words in context. They can mimic speech patterns while dispatching all the information it can get from the internet on a subject.
Open AI has opened their tech up to the public via an interface. Businesses have taken advantage and experimented at making communication with patients and customers alike better. Koko is a mental health company. Koko has used Open AI to help craft better answers to patients/customers. They were quick to point out, the patients were not speaking to a Bot directly; but the professionals use Open AI to give better answers. There is a service called DoNotPay which gives advice on how to resolve customer service issues using GPT driven chat.
Most are taking a more measured use of Chat GPT. Daniel Linna Jr., a professor at Northwestern University, works with a non-profit lawyer committee to help resolve tenant landlord issues. Rentervention uses AI bots to help draft better letters and responses for tenant disputes. Linna said these tools can be helpful, but they are not magic.
Open AI acknowledges that Chat GPT can write plausible sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Open AI was released to the public in November and quickly gained over 1 million subscribers. Elon Musk who co-founded Open AI left the company in 2018. Musk called the technology scary good.
Samantha Delouya, a writer for Business Insider did a whole piece on using Chat GPT to write a news story. “I started feeding Chat GPT a few prompts and was amazed at how quickly it generated coherent and well written responses. It was like having a virtual writing assistant at my fingertips. Chat GPT spit out 200 words and was alarmingly convincing, except for fake quotes attributed to the CEO of Stellantis.” Stellantis is the new owner of Chrysler Jeep. Delouya later found Chat GPT to struggle with nuance and understanding context.
Teachers, you have new tools to detect the use of these chatbots by students doing their writing for them. Cheaters are cheaters and as we all know sooner or later you will be caught. Education technology non-profits Quill.org and CommonLit.org have launched AIWritingCheck.org which will help teachers detect AI GPT text.
I did not use AI GPT to help write this newsletter. After reading information on how it can help, my conclusion is, it is a tool. The technology is a scary good tool, but a tool nonetheless. I am sure journalists of all sorts will be using AI GPT to help get out good and accurate information and its use will continue to grow. After all, we all use tools to speed up life’s tasks. AI GPT is just one more tool in the box. You cannot use AI GPT verbatim, it is not accurate and misses many human cues we use all the time. I do not see it usurping human written papers any time soon. It will get better; all tech gets better all the time.
Thanks, Andy McClung CFP TM
RE: The Journal: Technology Horizons in Education; Business Insider.com
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Source Wall Street Journal 03/06/23