I, Chatbot

I wonder what scifi pioneer Isaac Asimov would have thought of ChatGPT?

Fellow Americans, it is time for us to come together and create a country that works for all of us, not just the wealthy and powerful. For far too long, the rich and powerful have rigged the system to benefit themselves at the expense of working people. We must stand up to the billionaires and big corporations and demand that they start paying their fair share of taxes. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage, provide healthcare for all, and make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We must also tackle the existential threat of climate change and ensure that the transition to a sustainable economy creates good-paying jobs and benefits everyone, not just the wealthy. Together, we can create a nation where everyone has the opportunity to live a decent and dignified life.

So who do you think wrote this speech? Does it sound like Bernie Sanders? Or like me trying to imitate Bernie Sanders?

It was actually written by ChatGPT, a new(ish) artificial intelligence project that’s essentially an all-purpose chatbot. You tell it to do something, for example “Write a one-paragraph speech in the style of Bernie Sanders,” and it comes up with output that is often pretty impressive.

And it’s an original speech, not something Bernie actually said — if you Google it, you’ll see that Bernie uses some of these same words, but these aren’t direct quotes from his speeches.

Chat GPT been in the news due to concerns from employers and teachers who are concerned that they won’t be able to tell whether a cover letter for a position was written by a job candidate or a computer, or if a student really wrote their essay or just asked a chatbot to do it for them. And these are legitimate concerns, in my opinion, especially since it’s so customizable.

You can tell it to write things in a certain style, for example “Explain what concrete is to a 5-year-old,” and it writes using vocabulary and language that a 5-year-old might say or understand

Concrete is a hard, strong material that is used to make things like roads, buildings, and bridges. It's kind of like a big puzzle where you mix small rocks, sand, and a special glue called cement together, and then you pour it into a mold or form. After a little while, it dries and becomes hard, like a rock. And you can use that hard material to make all sorts of things. Imagine you have some Play-Doh and you put some gravels inside it and then mold it into a shape and then let it dry, that would be a similar concept to concrete.

Biden probably wonders where ChatGPT was when he needed material for his speeches, after he was caught and admitted to several cases of plagiarizing during his 1988 campaign. Nowadays he could just ask a chatbot to write it for him, as if politician’s human-created cliches and empty words aren’t bad enough already…

For now, it’s a fun tool, and I’ve been playing around with it a lot. But it’s another case where technology is getting so advanced that it’s hard for humans to keep up with, both in terms of product and the ethics behind it — who’s the author if you ask a chatbot to write something for you? Isn’t it “cheating” in some way, even if you might never be caught?

Then again, next time I’m running short on time for a post, maybe I’ll ask Chat GPT to write a post for me and see if anyone notices. (Do you know for sure that this entire post today wasn’t actually written by a chatbot? 🤔😁)

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