Did you feel the earth move these past few weeks? A deep rumbling that heralds a seismic shift? No? Then let me explain, and I don’t mean a lesson in geography. This is one for the history books and a watershed moment for the future of man and how we work and operate.
There have been many of these seismic shifts and many have caught the population by surprise. It is only with hindsight that the wise nod their heads and say, “See, I told you so. It was bound to happen.”
The first was probably that moment when someone planted wheat or rye, in specific spots to raise a crop instead of gathering whatever came along as you wandered. The bread lovers among us were enraptured.
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The next was possibly the invention of irrigation systems to water said crops and allow more food to be grown for the starving among us.
Possibly at the same time, the domestication of animals gave us another seismic shift in how we live and gave us the added incentive of actually riding some of these beasts of burden. We could move to far-flung places instead of where we could walk in a day.
Then the earth stayed quiet for a few millennia until the steam engine came to hurtle mankind into the Industrial Revolution. And what fun that was, with populations flocking to cities to work in dank and dark factories, the dark Satanic Mills of hymn fame. They churned out numerous goods that we pretended we needed. The era of mass consumerism began and still entices us today.
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Flash forward, a mere hundred years or so and technology grabs us in our own homes with laptop computers, smart phones and Google, to at once expand our knowledge and widen our world view but also to make us more self-absorbed and stupid by the day.
Now another chasm is opening up in front of us, the chasm of AI learning, where mankind could tip over the edge, possibly into a void of our own making.
Academics and teachers are scrambling to make sense of ChatGPT and whatever next version will be launched on the world. Their primary concern is cheating on a mass scale and many have had the knee-jerk reaction of banning these bots in schools and universities. This seems a futile effort. Students have always found a way to circumvent the system.
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Google and others are frantically playing catch-up to market their own version to the world. There’s money to be made out there.
Will these AI bots mean the end of some white-collar jobs? They appear to be able to write legal documents, code and create poetry given enough prompts. Will mankind’s creativity be reduced to asking a computer bot to write their story, their love letter, their music and draw their ideas?
Where will this all head? I have no crystal ball but the ground is moving. Will this be a nine on the Richter Scale or will it just be another blip in the evolution of man?
Perhaps we should ask AI?
Does AI disturb you? What about ChatGPT? Are we heading down a slippery slope? Why not share your thoughts in the comments section below?
