Richard Drew / AP
The logo for OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, appears on a mobile phone, in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. OpenAI is launching a new tool in an effort to curb its reputation as a freewheeling cheating machine with a new tool Tuesday that can help teachers detect if a student or artificial intelligence wrote that homework.
Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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But, can ChatGPT write legibly?
I am now going to wade into an area about which I know nothing and understand even less. But the idea of artificial intelligence turning out the next generation’s medical doctors is, at the very least, intriguing.
Besides, musing about a future that is barely comprehendible keeps me from fretting about the serious challenges we face today: be it climate change that is flooding and freezing and starving its way into our lives and refusing to leave; real-world challenges across the globe that are forming political and military alliances once unthinkable, that threaten our national security and international standing as the leader to be listened to; and domestic politics that, rather than returning toward a more perfectly sane union, continue down a path of crazy that threatens a workable democratic life in these United States.
So ChatGPT it is.
And since artificial intelligence — that’s the technology that powers the chatbots that work for ChatGPT (see, I am sounding smarter already) — conjures up the promise as well as the threat of taking our jobs in the near future, it seems to me that this is a topic that we should all get comfortable and knowledgeable about in a hurry.
I remember just a couple of decades ago when voice and video over the internet was just a dream of some scientists in a lab. When it was first introduced, the video was barely visible and the audio barely understandable.
It became clear to most that television over cable and telephone over wires would not be challenged for many decades to come.
Within what seems like months, satellite television and cellular telephones were on the scene and growing exponentially. To the point that it is hard to tell which video and which audio came from a wire or a satellite.
There is no reason to believe that AI will not follow a similar course. Which means that soon a chatbot will be taking our academic tests, writing the stories of the day, advising us about our daily responsibilities and, yes, inserting itself into the medical examining room.
In fact, recent stories tout the success of a chatbot on certain medical exams. The AI driven technology did well enough on the exam to be called doctor. Are we ready as a society to accept doctors who look like, act like and are robots? ( One upside, they can do medical school in just a few seconds).
We aren’t there yet, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to see the time when medical doctors — those people we depend upon to keep us healthy and yell at us when we aren’t doing what we should — may see among their ranks artificial humans brimming with artificial intelligence.
And if it can happen in the medical examining room, who can make any reasonable case that AI won’t be finding its way into the hiring processes of all jobs up and down the line.
We may not be there just yet. It should no longer be a matter of if it will happen but only when we will all have to get smarter about what is getting smarter all around us.
We are forewarned. We have the ability to educate ourselves to ensure a future compatible with this technology and not one where we are contemptible of it.
There is little doubt that my grandchildren’s generation is already considering life with chatbots and AI and how they will harness that incredible power to better the world.
There is, however, a great deal of doubt about how their parents’ generation will deal with the coming disruption. The challenge won’t be in the medical exam rooms quite yet. But it is coming for the jobs that humans are doing and robots may be able to do better.
Will we do what Americans like to do these days, which is sit around complaining and blaming, or will we educate ourselves sufficiently to embrace this coming new world?
I am at an age where I will do what I need to understand this latest technological advance, but I realize that the effect on my generation will be minimal.
So I will spend my time encouraging the next generations to be prepared. Because that time is coming fast.
And to my doctor friends, don’t despair. AI can never replicate your handwriting so your jobs are safe. For now.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun
