ChatGPT — a game changer

These are my thoughts after playing with ChatGPT for a few days. I definitely think it’s a game-changer. I think we will soon have a “slowly slowly and then suddenly” moment.

Like a million other people, I was curious too and played with ChatGPT for quite some time. Honestly, I was a bit bored after a few days. But then, I was not using it for any real purpose except entertainment.

But for work-related activities like re-writing emails, subject lines, ad copies etc, I must admit it did the job quite well. In fact, I tried asking it to act as a counsellor and I’m impressed by its answers.

One major limitation I felt is:

Non-actionable answers: The answers to open-ended questions are too generic. Despite trying to provide more context, it tends to provide the same answers again and again, which is not helpful.

Here are my thoughts and how I view AI will be part of our daily lives:

1. We will Google less and want more direct answers instead of opening the top 3 links in 3 different tabs. Even if it’s not accurate, we will try prompting it further to get our desired answer. If ChatGPT is provided with the capability to surf the internet and answer, it will be a game changer.
2. AI will be a most trusted colleague. One of the major fears of people in the workplace is looking stupid. And hence people ask less often than what they should be doing, hence limiting their growth. With an AI that has the complete context of inside documents, emails etc, it will be a lot easier for people to ask those stupid but important questions which will unlock knowledge and therefore helps them become more successful.
3. We will waste more time than ever. What are we doing with all the time that we got by not going to grocery stores, cooking daily, and not driving to work? Are we doing more productive or helpful stuff? I highly doubt it. With AI, the “free” time is only going to increase.
4. Better code, therefore better products. Sooner or later companies are going to take the help of AI to grade or identify bugs in their code. So, naturally, we will have much better digital products.

And here are some downsides I could think of:

1. Mass biases. Every AI algorithm out there is biased. End of the day they are trained by humans and hence the biases. The amplification of these biases is going to be at a much faster rate and spreads wide and deep. And once major people accept these responses as “facts”, it will be hard to get to the core “truths”.
2. People find it hard to live with people. We have already experienced this at one level with the mass adoption of smartphones. Just look around when you are travelling or when at a restaurant; people are busy looking at their phones. At least people are consuming information created by other people. Soon when people find it comfortable talking to AI (non-judgemental + patience), people will tend to spend more time chatting/talking to AI and hence expect similar responses from other people — which is nearly impossible.

A question…

Far in the future, say after 1_00 years, will AI become the President of the United States?

PS: No, this is not a blog written by ChatGPT. I did. And there is no way I can prove it to you. Another downside, you see ;)