Eman Ghacham/The Cougar
On Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT was quietly released to the public via a tweet from OpenAI: “Today we launched ChatGPT. Try talking with it here: chat.openai.com.”
What began as a modest introduction of a new technology similar to Apple’s annual iPhone announcements quickly turned the conversation as the capabilities of this language model grew. Despite the contention surrounding it, AI has a multitude of benefits that far exceed misconceptions about it.
“Soon, you will have helpful assistants that talk to you, answer questions, and give advice. Later, you can have something that goes off and does tasks for you. Eventually, you can have something that goes off and discovers new knowledge for you,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.
The later launch of ChatGPT Plus further expanded its reach. By March, AI assistants were everywhere—Snapchat’s My AI, Quizlet Q-chat and Google’s Search AI all jumped on board along with many others.
The rapid adoption of AI fueled fears that it was approaching human-level intelligence. However, even with these concerns, Artificial Intelligence has brought great benefits to students and workers alike.
“People have different learning styles and learn at different rates. AI models can… learn about an individual’s progress as they work. AI can adjust content, and feedback, providing personalized learning through a program tailored to each participant,” professor of computer science Nouhad Rizk said. “Artificial intelligence can automate this process, assess work and progress for each learner and provide personalized feedback.”
Yet, just as with electricity and the internet, the initial fears surrounding AI and ChatGPT are being balanced by the potential for significant societal benefits. “The question of whether AI is a threat… depends on the context in which AI is used,” Rizk said.
Assistant professor of computer science Dan Biediger reiterates that massive changes will open a lot more new opportunities for industries to grow.
“There will be massive changes. Moving from horses to automobiles. There was a big feat that people would go out of business…but there were a ton of new jobs in the automobile industry,” Biediger said. “So even though it will affect some things that exist now, there will be a lot more new opportunities that can come up.”
The internet, despite similar initial controversies, revolutionized the computer and communications world, opening up access to information and creating entirely new industries and opportunities.
It’s also important to note that the concept of artificial intelligence is not new. Oldest known discussions of automata date back to the sacred statues of ancient Egypt and Greece. The faithful believed that craftsmen had imbued these figures with very real minds with knowledge and emotion.
Hermes Trismegistus wrote that “by discovering the true nature of the gods, man has been able to reproduce it.”
This is a statement that alludes to the Turing test. If a machine can engage and behave like a human without being detected as a machine, it passes the Turing test, and ChatGPT is one of the only AI to pass.
The reason these models can pass the Turing Test is because they are trained on massive amounts of datasets spanning back years, such as with the rather annoying CAPTCHA, which is in fact being used to train AI systems in learning the intricacies of language, context and social psychology.
As AI continues to evolve, education systems are changing for the better with an emphasis in creativity, critical thinking and social interaction. The journey of AI, much like that of electricity or the internet, is one of transformative impact—one that, if guided wisely, will lead to profound and lasting benefits for humanity.
Melisa Unlu is a computer science senior who can be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com
—
“AI is not the threat we think it is” was originally posted on The Cougar