Speed Check Ahead: The New Reality of OpenAI's ChatGPT

A week ago we were on a trip to Memphis. My 18-year-old son was riding shotgun when a message popped up on Apple Maps, an app I usually have running when traveling anywhere. "Speed check ahead," it said. I'd seen accidents reported before and the app even asked me once if there was still an accident in the area, but never a speed check. I told my son there must be a highway patrol "on the prowl." He wasn't so sure, thinking it might just be a roadside stationary radar. He's also no stranger to technology, having once been interested in cyber crime and security. In a week he devoured Marc Goodman's Future Crimes book about the vulnerabilities of a connected world when he was 14. Another mile down the road we passed a highway patrol. That sparked a conversation about what the future might look like with smart cars and how it could change travel. I asked if he was familiar with ChatGPT. He admitted he hadn't had the pleasure, and my knowledge was limited to only reading about it. So, for the next two hours of open road, we indulged ourselves.

Our initial questions were fairly benign, assuming we were merely dealing with another version of Alexa, Siri, or Google. How na?ve we were, looking back now. We quizzed it about a range of topics from "What's your favorite color" to more socially polarizing questions. Immediately we recognized the difference between this AI and the others. It understood everything we asked it, usually offering more information than we needed, but in a way that made us certain we weren't "chatting" with anything we had ever encountered before. Never a response of "This is what I found." This AI chatbot was on an island. At first I wished it had voice recognition and spoke back to me, but soon felt that any natural voice capabilities like other AIs have would have dumbed down its responses. Organically noticing an opportunity, my son decided to see what it could do to help him with his AP physics course. "How high would I need to thrown an object in the air for it to land 10 seconds later." Immediately, Assistant (the name given by its creators) defined each of the variables, gave him the formula, substituted the known values into the equation (gravity and time) and solved it for him.

Very intrigued, but not yet satisfied we had tested the limits of this new tool, we decided to ask it something absurd. How creative was this thing? Could it create art? Poetry even? "Okay," I said, "tell it to write us a sonnet about a..." I looked at our surroundings. "A truck driver." Within seconds came the response. "A sonnet is a poem with 14 lines, typically written in iambic pentameter," as if I needed a reminder (I did). Then it produced a poem:

A semi-truck driver, strong and brave and true,

Whose life is spent on endless, winding roads,

From dawn till dusk he plies his trade anew,

A faithful servant to his heavy loads.

He feels the weight of every mile he drives,

The endless stretch of blacktop and bright lights,

But through it all he keeps his spirit alive,

A beacon shining through the darkest nights.

He knows the dangers of the open road,

The icy winds and rain, the blinding snow,

But still he carries on, his heart unshod,

A hero of the highways to and fro.

So here’s to you, dear driver of the semi,

A champion of the road, and worthy of your glory.

At this point shocked, not because we thought the poem was brilliant, but the fact that it was still good quality and Assistant delivered it in seconds. "Alright," I said with a new level of confidence. "I'm not satisfied with that one. I don't like it. Tell it to write another one." You see, there's a feature on ChatGPT that allows you to regenerate a new response of the same question. I was ready to see if was up to the task. It was.

O mighty semi-truck driver, brave and true,

Whose skill and strength keep goods and people moving.

From coast to coast, your journey knows no bounds.

Your rig a home, your road a second proving,

You face the dangers of the open road.

The storms and winds, the twists and turns ahead,

But through it all, you keep your course and goad.

Your engine roaring, your wheels never dead.

Your days are long, your nights a lonely trial,

But still you push on, through the rain and snow,

Your burden great, but your spirit never mild,

Your journey's end, a sight you'll always know.

So here's a toast to you,

O trucker true

My son, a budding singer/songwriter, lost it. He yelled in disbelief at his phone, "I've been trying to do this for years, and then this just decided to spit lyrics like...What is this?!!" So we had it write us an essay on the health benefits of ice cream. No problem. "Google that," I said, "It's plagiarizing someone." Nope. All original content. I wondered if Assistant, like Wikipedia in its inception, would turn from a dubious source of truth to accepted and quoted in school work. Almost exhausted, my son wondered if it could write a song about lost love. While it didn't produce a top Billboard hit, it was a song...with a bridge even. "Give me a chord progression for this song." Done, with a disclaimer that the chords chosen are up to the artist, in the end. "What would be a good melody for this song?" Assistant put notes to the words. I don't know how good the song really was. I was reeling at the fact it understood what we were asking it and giving us legitimate responses.

After a few hours with ChatGPT, I admitted to my son that if you want to play a game or hear a joke, ask Google and friends. Those were mere toys in comparison to this. Articles have already been written about how OpenAI could change the landscape of education and other aspects of our digital ecosystem with their release of ChatGPT. We did find some minor chinks in its armor, it wasn't perfect. It got some facts wrong. But it was impressive. Recently Google's management team spoke out about it, obviously worried not only about implications to society but their own slipping grip on search engine dominance. There is reason to be cautious. This type of technology is moving us quickly down the road at break-neck rates, without real consideration of long-term consequences. A speed check might be exactly what we need.