ChatGPT: A week of ups and downs

I've spent much of the last week asking ChatGPT from OpenAI a variety of questions pertaining to young engineers. The results were interesting, informative, and not always true.

My first impression: ChatGPT produces eminently readable text. Although its responses lack Steinbeckian flair, they are concise and engaging. So when I asked "To what companies are civil engineers most interested in applying?" I received a straightforward list of companies, effectively summarized from ... somewhere.

But almost immediately, there were flaws. As Joe Stanley , a civil engineer's civil engineer, rightly pointed out, one of its recommended companies didn't actually exist anymore. 西图 , apparently of serious interest to any burgeoning CE student or graduate, was actually absorbed by Jacobs Engineering Group in 2017. I don't ding ChatGPT for not knowing something that took place after 2021; it is clear in its opening text that it doesn't know anything that happened afterward. But 2017? Come on.

Weirdly, it was better on subjective topics. For something touted by many as a 谷歌 -killer (though not, I take pains to recognize, by its own creators), it did much better answering "soft" questions than those requiring real facts. For instance, when I asked what sort of skills not taught in a classroom an engineering student should know, it answered with a fairly comprehensive and thoughtful list. In fact, I'll probably use part of the response in future marketing to students.

It's certainly going to change higher education in the future. As I discussed with Stephanie Smullen earlier today, given the controversy surrounding Charlie J. , Frank, and J.P. 摩根 , I expect there will be a lot of suspicion around future "disruptive" efforts to simplify scholarship applications and process at universities. However, ChatGPT may ultimately lead to just such a disruption. Imagine, for instance, conversing with a chat-search engine to walk through the myriad financial aid and scholarship packages, and their respective, byzantine requirements and timeframes. Provided that it is up-to-date, wouldn't it be simpler to have a back-and-forth with a dispassionate, but relatively polite, bit of software? Something that won't get frustrated, or run out of time, or defer questions somewhere else?

That's still in the future. But you can measure that time in years, not decades. And, at least from my initial experience, maybe even in just a few months.