Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is a term that has been thrown around a lot in recent years. With all its hype and impressive demonstrations, there has also been fear that it will take over jobs of many people. The reality, however, is much more nuanced. While AI has certainly made certain tasks easier and more efficient, it is important to consider what is hype versus the reality when it comes to its potential impact on employment and other fields.
What is ChatGPT?
To start with the AI talk, we have to talk about ChatGPT, as it has been the spark of a lot of talks and changes in this area. ChatGPT is a large language model created by OpenAI based on the GPT-3.5 architecture(GPT 4 is still being rolled out slowly, but has been available on bing). It is an AI-powered system designed to generate human-like text and engage in natural language conversations with users. It is trained on thousands of terabytes of data and can generate text in a variety of languages and styles. ChatGPT is often used in chatbots, customer service applications, and other conversational AI systems. Its capabilities include answering questions, providing recommendations, completing tasks, and generating text based on specific prompts or inputs.
As of currently, it does a very poor job at math and at answering anything beyond its training data(which includes information up until 2021), but GPT4 promises to bring integration with math libraries and to allow inputting an entire wiki as context to then ask about it, allowing the model to overcome at least those limitations.
Artificial General Intelligence
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a theoretical form of AI that aims to replicate human-level intelligence across a wide range of tasks. AGI would be capable of performing any intellectual task that a human can do, including problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, and many others. The key characteristic of AGI is its ability to learn and adapt to new situations, much like people can.
The AI technology that is currently available is more limited in scope than AGI. While there are many different types of AI systems available today, most of them are designed to perform specific tasks or functions. For example, machine learning algorithms can be trained to recognize patterns in data and make predictions based on that data, while natural language processing systems like ChatGPT are designed to generate human-like text and engage in conversations with users. Both systems require inputs to generate anything.
Unlike AGI, current AI systems are not capable of learning and adapting to new situations on their own. They require human input to function properly and are typically trained on specific datasets or algorithms. They are also limited by their ability to operate within specific contexts and environments, and cannot transfer their knowledge or skills to new domains.
Hype VS Reality
As a language model, ChatGPT is an example of a very advanced AI. You give it a question, and it spits out an answer within seconds. While it can generate text and answer millions of different things, ChatGPT is only able to do so based on the data that has been inputted into its system. Without human programmers and developers, it would not exist nor would it be able to do anything. Without a similar question previously answered by someone online, it doesn’t know how to respond and most likely will spit out non-sense or lies as it has done many times. Similarly, many other AI systems require significant human input, creativity and correction to function properly. This means that rather than taking jobs, AI is likely to create new job opportunities and work alongside people, instead of replacing them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while AI has made significant progress in recent years, the currently available AI technology is more limited in scope than people think. It is possible that as models advance, some jobs might disappear or have less people working in the area, but humans will always be necessary as algorithms are incapable of creativity and adaptation. AI should not be seen as a replacement for humans, but as a “partner”, as it has been shown that working alongside it yields better results than by yourself or letting the AI do everything
