How to use ChatGPT

You may have already heard about this artificial intelligence writing readable text.

• kids are now using AI to write their essays,
• people are using AI to write blog posts
• dogs and cats are living together...

In all seriousness, this will have a profound effect on the need for knowledge workers who's craft is the written word, and —in the not too distant future— human's abilities to construct sentences unassisted.

How does it work?

There are a number of AI writing services out on the market but the most popular — because it's free— is Chat OpenAI also know as ChatGPT.

To use this platform, you need to:

1. Login with your email
2. 2. Give it your phone number
3. 3. Give it a prompt to write something

It really is that simple.

The more specific the prompt you provide it, the better the output. Here's an example of what you can do:

Input:

"write a sonnet about machine learning in the voice of William Shakespeare"

Output:

Oh Machine Learning, thou art a curious thing,
A marvel of the modern age, I must say.
Thy algorithms and models doth take wing,
And soar beyond the realms of mortal fray.

Thy neural nets doth mimic human thought,
And learn from data with such speed and grace.
Thy decision trees doth sort and sort,
And find the patterns in the numbers' maze.

Thy deep learning doth plumb the depths of mind,
And make the impossible, possible.
Thy reinforcement doth train and bind,
To make machines act most reasonable.

But as with all great power, comes great care,
Lest we forget, machines are not human, beware.

NOTE: The AI wrote& all of the above.

Short term implications

So what are the implications of this type of technology being immediately available to everyone in the world?  Obviously, this is a challenge for English and all other language educators. Detecting fake essays in this world is an impossible task. While the algorithm seems to store and output the same content for the same prompt, even a slight tweak brings out new writing. For example:

Input:

"write a sonnet about aws machine learning in the voice of William Shakespeare"

Output:

Oh Amazon Web Services, thou bringeth forth
A host of tools for Machine Learning's gain.
Thy SageMaker doth simplify the process,
And make the path to knowledge less arcane.

Thy Comprehend doth analyze text with ease,
And uncover hidden meaning in the words.
Thy Rekognition doth images please,
And find the patterns that go unobserved.

Thy Forecast doth predict the future trends,
And guide the way for businesses to thrive.
Thy Transcribe doth transcribe speech to transcends
And make the spoken word come alive.

But with great power, comes great responsibility
Be sure to use thy tools with care and humility.

This technology also has significant implications for anyone who makes a living writing. Will marketing text all be written by robots? Will robots start writing novels?  The impacts in the near term will be profound.

The long term

In a world where robots can write, humans will still need to read, but will we need to understand how to put pen to paper? It wasn't long ago that cursive was cut from elementary school education, and now we have whole generations that can't read cursive.  With the prevalence of spellcheck and auto-correct, I would imagine, we will have many people who can't spell when away from a computer. Writing itself may become a similar skill.

Then again, we also have generations (myself included) who can't create fire without matches or a lighter.  Perhaps one hundred years from now, we will look back on writing "by hand" as a quaint skill no longer needed in today's world.