ChatGPT - the AI Tsunami

Ever since ChatGPT got released on the last day of November, 2022, it has triggered immense interest. Yes, like an AI tsunami. Barely four days after it was released by parent OpenAI, the number of users reached 1 million! Today we learnt that Microsoft is going to have a multi-year, multi-billion ($10B) investment in OpenAI Lab. The deal marks the third phase of the partnership between the two companies, following Microsoft’s previous investments in 2019 and 2021. Microsoft said the renewed partnership will accelerate breakthroughs in AI and help both companies commercialize advanced technologies in the future. For example, it will build ChatGPT-like features into Microsoft Word.

OpenAI is?ranked by AI researchers?as one of the top three AI labs worldwide, and the company has?developed game-playing AI software that can beat humans at video?games such as Dota 2. However, it’s arguably received more attention for its AI?text generator GPT-3? and its quirky?AI image generator Dall-E.

ChatGPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) automatically generates text?based on written prompts in a fashion that’s much more advanced and creative than the chatbots of Silicon Valley’s past. Since its introduction in late November it has quickly turned into a viral sensation as tech executives and venture capitalists gushed about it on Twitter, even?comparing?it to?Apple’s?debut of the iPhone in 2007.?Google has issued a code-red (panic button) on ChatGPT as it may supersede Google search where the user has the burden of collecting information from various links. ChatGPT eases that burden by assembling facts plus more.

The first books written by ChatGPT have already been published. ?"I think this Is huge," said professor Erik Brynjolfsson, director of Stanford University's Digital Economy Lab. "I wouldn't be surprised 50 years from now, people looked back and say, wow, that was a really seminal set of inventions that happened in the early 2020s.

"Most of the U.S. economy is knowledge and information work, and that's who's going to be most squarely affected by this," he said. "I would put people like lawyers right at the top of the list. Obviously, a lot of copywriters, screenwriters. But I like to use the word 'affected,' not 'replaced,' because I think if done right, it's not going to be AI replacing lawyers; it's going to be lawyers working with AI replacing lawyers who don't work with AI."

ChatGPT has created a lot of concern and anguish also. Some students are already using ChatGPT to cheat on homework essays. No wonder ChatGPT has been called?"The end of high-school English,"?"The end of the college essay,"?and?"The return of the handwritten in-class essay."

Someone using ChatGPT doesn't need to know structure or syntax or vocabulary or grammar or even spelling. But Jane Rosenzweig, director of the Writing Center at Harvard, said, "The piece I also worry about, though, is the piece about?thinking. When we teach writing, we're teaching people to explore an idea, to understand what other people have said about that idea, and to figure out what?they?think about it. A machine can do the part where it puts ideas on paper, but it can't do the part where it puts?your?ideas on paper."

But what about students cheating on their essays? Some detection ideas have come up; like an algorithmic "watermark," an invisible flag embedded into ChatGPT's writing, that can identify its source.There are ChatGPT detectors, but they probably won't stand a chance against the upcoming new version, ChatGPT 4, which has been trained on 500 times as much writing. People who've seen it say it's miraculous.

A very senior person at OpenAI basically described it as a phase change. You know, it's like going from water to steam. It's just a whole new level of ability.

Like it or not, the AI Tsunami like ChatGPT is here to stay.