Have you heard about ChatGPT? The humanlike chatbot, communicating with people thanks to artificial intelligence, has gone viral since its release last month marking some great progress in the tech industry.
Artificial intelligence is explained as ”the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems”. Specific applications of AI can be expert systems, natural language processing or speech recognition (Techtarget). OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT, was founded in 2015 by a group of people – one of them Elon Musk. Their development has attracted billions of dollars in funding from tech investors.
During the free testing period of ChatGPT, over a million users have already registered on the site to try out the bot. As I too wanted to try out the latest tech, I created an account. I then had to fill in a box, assuring the site that “I’m not a robot” (is this really the time to discriminate robots? haha) I wanted the bot to explain its function to me. “What are you?” I wrote. Two seconds later the chatbot started to type down paragraphs.“I am a large language model trained by OpenAI. I am not a physical robot or a person, but a program that is designed to generate human-like responses to text input. I can answer questions, provide information, and engage in conversation on a wide range of topics, but I am not conscious and do not have the ability to think or learn in the way that people do”. I was shocked by its ability to write such a flawless text.
AI is also known to have some trouble criticizing where they gather their information. In a world full of false information with source criticism being more important than ever, The ChatGPT lies one step behind with not being able to present where the gathered info is coming from. And as I tried the bot, I noticed that everything it presented wasn’t correct.
As a writer myself, I couldn’t help but wonder: If the new era of AI can produce such complex texts, what could this mean for journalism in the future? Will writers like me even be needed? Well, I think we will be. The potential of GPT in journalism is vast. As a large language model trained on a vast amount of text data, GPT is capable of generating human-like text that can be used in a variety of ways in the field of journalism.One potential use of GPT is to help reporters and writers quickly generate articles or news stories on a wide range of topics. But as AI may be cool, it doesn’t make up for the art of individuals expressing their thoughts in their own unique words As the bot said itself, it isn’t conscious and can not think or learn in the way real people do. Even though AI:s are smart, they cannot really replace the human mind and their ability to think unique thoughts. It is also important to say that AI doesn’t have the ability to create new knowledge or come up with entirely novel ideas. They are “simply” a tool designed to help people communicate and access information.
Oh and by the way, ChatGPT agrees! It told me that “while technology has changed the way that news is consumed and reported, it is not a replacement for the valuable work that journalists do”. So even though Elon Musk have said that AI is a threat to humankind, the bot on ChatGPT still stands by my side. The benefits that come with the new tech is truly unbelievable but only the future can tell whether it contributes to good or bad consequences for humankind.
Source
https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/AI-Artificial-Intelligence
