An email from future me: a ChatGPT tale!

I just got an email from myself in the future. It warned me about ChatGPT...

?

Hi Jose, this is me, I mean you, from 2050. It took so long to reach out because I couldn't find an email server. Man, this technology is so old - and I had forgotten how inefficient and painful it was.

I traveled to the past to warn you (me): Watch out for Open AI and ChatGPT. This will change humanity.

At first, humanity was concerned about bias in Artificial Intelligence. Open AI got a lot of things right, and people were impressed, but sometimes it was all wrong. Screening the past to address issues that didn't exist in the past proved to be problematic. Not to mention cultural biases! They weren't fast enough to handle bias in ChatGPT.?

People started using artificial intelligence widely. At the start, we could say when a text was sourced by Open AI - until we couldn't. Not sure why people underestimate machines. Yeah… this is not a new issue, as humans have always produced fraudulent content, fake news, and edited images. With AI, they just did it faster and better. At a certain point, even the past became uncertain.

Artificial intelligence changed the roles of professionals. You had to be a GREAT content producer/curator to not be substituted by AI (AI is "good enough" and does it much faster and cheaper). An alternative is to become a manager: identify the problem, search and choose alternative solutions, draw a tactical plan, and let AI do its thing. The most prized professional skill at AI times? judgment.

Don't get me started on politics. 2022 was the last Presidential Election not influenced by artificial intelligence. Society has become even more polarized than in the previous social media era.

Here comes the scariest part: avatars. People like you (me) created their personas on Open AI, and Artificial Intelligence learned to be you. AI learned to talk, write, teach, and mentor like you. Back in 2023, AI could already stream your LIVE VIDEO in English, Portuguese, Chinese, and other 70 languages in real-time. Sounding like you, with your voice! In addition to knowing you from what you taught it, it learned from your past, your videos, and your social media. At some point, it learned to access your phone, spending 24 hours per day learning to be you. AI took over your persona.

Today (here in 2050), you can't tell if ANY content has been created by a person or their personas. Some personas have multiplied in various personas: the imperfect persona (supposed to be more like you), the evil persona, the loving persona, the capitalist persona, and the communist persona. There is one persona for each creed. Things have gone crazy and out of control.

But people counterstrike. In 2023 you created ANGEL, a persona meant to protect you from AI. Its goal is to deactivate unauthorized personas, clean their digital footprint, and ensure you are not misrepresented worldwide. That was brilliant.

Now (in 2050), society is going back offline because nobody trusts anything online anymore. All versions of you will be terminated. All over the world, people are terrified to have their humanity exposed. Angel is your last hope of not going back to the 80s.

You know what you need to do!

farewell,

Angel

Final note: this fiction article was inspired by several SXSW 2023 sections. But most of it is not fiction.

#chatgpt #securato #talktosecurato