Opinion: Artificial Intelligence for Dummies – CTPost

Illustration of artifical brains the tech giants are racing to develop.  
If you’ve been following the news, you know artificial intelligence is about to take over the world — by the time you read this, it may have already happened.
Of course, the world is a big place that includes Hollywood, Congress, Whole Foods, Ivy League colleges, McDonald’s drive-thru, Mar-a-Lago and “The View.” With artificial intelligence, will we need any of that stuff?
I got a little anxious after reading a letter signed by 1,800 geniuses, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who urged the technology community to have a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced artificial intelligence projects because they represent a “profound risk to society and humanity.” My fear is that six months isn’t enough time to settle our affairs and celebrate one last Thanksgiving before the robots take over.
Even Stephen Hawking, who had one of the biggest brains in history, recognized the threat nine years ago, when he said AI “could spell the end of the human race.”
I really got scared when I saw a headline in the New York Times that said, “‘The Godfather of AI’ warns of danger ahead.” Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in AI, “left Google so that he can freely share his concern that artificial intelligence can cause the world serious harm.”
On the other hand, countless non-geniuses insist artificial intelligence is the promise of the future, and it will save the education system, the health care system, the financial system, the political system, the fast food system and every other system that’s about to collapse. The only systems that aren’t collapsing are casino gambling and cannabis.
Every day, there’s a hundred more articles by geeks who swear artificial intelligence has cures for everything from cancer, acne and prostate problems to overpriced drugs, nuclear disarmament, low-cost housing and pornography, not to mention grammar and punctuation. My wife is excited because she’s convinced AI will do our yard work and clean the gutters.
If AI systems such as ChatGPT can write flawless assignments for college students, just imagine what they could do for the White House, when it comes to inflation, the border crisis, energy costs and climate change.
Let me share a story about my personal encounters with artificial intelligence. This past semester, I noticed some assignments from my students were virtually perfect, although somewhat sterile and over-loaded with adjectives. But who doesn’t love an adjective or two, or 222? They’re as addictive as Lay’s potato chips used to be.
However, there was too much perfection. Not one comma was out of place. This made me suspicious, since the assignments were written by students who a few days earlier thought there were only two punctuation marks  — the semicolon and the exclamation point.
Suddenly, they were writing more compound-complex sentences than William Faulkner and had a larger vocabulary than all 3,194 pages in Webster’s New International Dictionary (second edition).
My first response was to sprain my shoulder, trying to pat myself on the back for the great job I’d done teaching. Then it occurred to me something wasn’t right.
With the help of my son-in-law, who teaches English and literature, I discovered the real author was ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that talks to you and composes essays, emails, code and pasta recipes with or without Bolognese sauce. You tell it what you want, and Chatty does the rest.
After we ran the assignments through a program that detects AI-generated work, I learned there was a 99 percent probability they were actually composed by a sinister computer, who is probably named HAL. Remember him from “2001 A Space Odyssey”? He tried to kill all the astronauts but finally asked forgiveness and said, “I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.” That’s the kind of system we need because it can learn from its mistakes.
Anyway, this is why public school systems in New York and Los Angeles have banned ChatGPT, and teachers are getting back to writing with paper and pencil to ensure kids hand in original work.
ChatGPT could write this column better than I can, but you might not get all the clever cliches and goofy humor.
What students don’t realize is the same artificial intelligence that’s doing their homework will someday be doing their jobs. Musicians and rappers are even concerned because artificial intelligence can mimic their style and write better verses. No need for Bob Dylan, Drake or Jay-Z. The good news is you won’t have to pay a thousand dollars to see Taylor Swift.
One last thought. I want to assure you, Scouts’ honor, this column wasn’t written by artificial intelligence. It was written by imperfect human intelligence. Just to prove it, I put in a few grammatical errors in case my editor decides to run this through a detection program.
One additional last thought. Experts say we don’t have to worry about artificial intelligence taking over the world if we have ethical and honest programmers developing the systems. Unfortunately, ethics and honesty are in short supply nowadays.
One last last thought: Please don’t email me and say the only thing that can save America is artificial intelligence … because human intelligence just isn’t doing the job.
Former Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time Editor Joe Pisani can be reached at joefpisani@yahoo.com.
 

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