The legal dispute between The New York Times, Microsoft, and OpenAI over the use of the newspaper’s...
A New Frontier
I am shouting into a cacophony when I say that there is a revolution coming to the world and it is loud and wordy: ChatGPT.
Generative AI is absolutely the latest craze, and the buzz will fade in some time (probably 12-18 months). However, the value of this technology has yet to be unlocked and I believe it can revolution how we innovate. My hypothesis is that generative AI will be an outstanding assistant for innovation by providing a platform for prototyping and assisted analysis that was only possible with advanced computing and analysis education.
Thus, my new hobby: testing the limits of ChatGPT as a product development tool. I will provide updates as I go.
A few things to understand about ChatGPT before we get started:
I have become fascinated with chatGPT. This is a powerful tool for generating new things. There are a couple critical lessons.
1) It is not a search engine. Some criticism of the system is that it does not provide consistent answers sometimes. It is not a search engine. It does not have to the minute information. It is the equivalent of an eloquent academic summarizing information. It is not superintelligence. It is an artificial intelligence. Once it is out of research mode and has live data, for example from Bing, then I would expect more accurate answers.
2) It is not replacing humans and should not be used to doing so. Generative AI does not have voice or personality. Using it for writing will result in bland and unoriginal writing. Moreover, it does not cite sources. But it can help start thoughts. It can provide a template for something. AI does not get writers block and does not have an off day. It will consistently generate content when asked which is valuable in a world where content is needed. Humans will always have to edit and revise and adjust but that is the fast and fun part anyway.
3) Generating essays or poems is a boring use case. Using this as a teaching tool ("explain x using x as a metaphor") or a synthesizer ("summarizes Nietzsche's thoughts on religion") or to augment complex human skills ("write me a program in python that does X") are all much more valuable use cases for the AI that truly augment our capability as humans.
This technology will dawn a new age of computing where humans and computers can work more symbiotically. As a result, the power of this tool for product development could be truly revolutionary. It will help us innovate more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.
