[jlunfirst]

James, our IT dept. head honcho sent corporate group email, warning folks about ChatGPT. The warning was about its capacity to auto-generate wrong info. So the example was listing 5 top head sr. managers....as currently valid. Well, 1 of them left our organization.......6 years ago. So the list was scraped from more than 1 source for 1 short list.

From govn't side, it is a concern of generating wrong info./posing as the source, when it isn't.

I never had a LinkedIn profile..and I don't intend to ever now with various developments going on. Too many yahoos playing around.

The problem there's enough folks who don't even know how to research/source authoritative information. For instance for legislation, you should go direct to the govn't site first as a lay person (and even lawyer if their fee-bases sources aren't updated yet). A layperson might not even understand the difference between statute and regulation.

Information literacy among a certain population is a challenge, even a problem.

 

[jlunfirst]

As I've said before, [some] business people don't really understand technologies and they will misuse this.

The prospect of firing workers and reducing headcounts is just too exciting for business people and corporate owners. So they're going to put GPT into all kinds of dumb places, and it's going to cause all kinds of dumb problems.

Unrelated to this, but just to let you know the National and B.C. Building Code (including Alberta, Ontario) and National Fire Code are not online for free on the Internet. You have to pay for licensed online access.

 

[jlunfirst]

Yes exactly this.

A real estate agent can have chatGPT draft a description for a listing and then do a quick edit. It's a more advanced version of copy/pasting a template to work off which always led to copy/paste errors because it's hard to catch every detail.

It's just a tool that makes people more efficient. The boomers are scared and imagining things because they haven't actually used it.

I'm not sure what boomers have to do with all this.

It's great that AI could write real estate ads, or any product ad that requires to meet set information content for readers. Including food product ads for websites, etc. What we hope is the next generations have capacity to still communicate and write well, persuasively for complex concepts and ideas.

 

[jlunfirst]

Well I also agree with the Luddites. I think the impact will be very significant.
I think these AI tools are very useful and are likely to raise the bar of what is automatable in the future.
I'm a very concerned about the impact on workers.

I was a big fan of smart reschedule in Todoist.

Todoist Launches Smart Schedule, an AI-Based Feature to Reschedule Overdue Tasks

When Todoist’s data scientist Oleg Shidlowsky and his team started looking at aggregate task data earlier this year, they discovered an interesting pattern: despite tools to assign due dates and good intentions, most people tend to accumulate incomplete tasks and defer them indefinitely. The...

www.macstories.net

I actually paid for premium(Yes $60/yr for a todo list app), and removed it when they cancelled it.

I don't think AI is fatally flawed, however I think it is very scary that it will be misapplied and misused in inappropriate circumstances.
For example some posters here have said that ChatGPT is accurate, and it most certainly is NOT.

I am using CHATGPT as I would a junior employee or a COOP student.

I will give it a task so I don't need to figure out how to do it or take the time etc.
But I will always review/check its work as I am ultimately responsible for the use and delivery of information. It may make errors at these early stages and you may need to ask it to modify accordingly but it can do so very quickly. This is a great tool to be used to increase your personal efficiency but it is like the junior employee and it needs to be managed.

I would not want it as my customer facing tool as AI chat bots are often used (yet). But in the back room helping to do the grunt work to make those customer facing people look better.

But try to imagine a manager / sr. manager who is wowed by a flashy sales presentation on ChatGPT or similar who has NO /very little knowledge about ChatGPT and then ..approves it as solving higher level problems which should involve considering clients' background to solve psychosocial related decisions. Or simply a more creative, yet practical solution never thought of.

In my personal opinion, some of the large IT or partial IT new system implementations, were decisions made by a sr. manager (with budget authority) who really didn't know/nor knew who to trust as subject matter experts....that is NOT IT folks. ChatGPT is a part an arensal of technology tools. The strongest value add is the subject matter specialists in whatever that software application will support as a tool. For instance to create low level ChatGPT, for the legal sector, you need lawyers and paralegals to help shape and test the tool. Not IT. For my line of work, you need linguists, subject matter specialists across all disciplines (law, engineering, etc.).

And of course, desired strong project manager so costs are controlled and success on usable product.

The heart of all this is use of language and how words are differently interpreted and used by different people ....then how does that transfer to ChatGPT. I am not addressing code and regenerative code for repetitive tasks. I am simply reflecting on a narrow part of ChatGPT as pattern recognition of certain concepts captured in words.

 

[jlunfirst]

My nightmare is when spammers/malicious state actors get ahold of GPT-like conversational AI. A lot of this activity is quite obvious currently, but places a burden on platforms to filter and remove. Once AI-generated messages are more subtle and essentially indistinguishable from humans, I can see a future where platforms are overwhelmed by very convincing user generated content created by AI. Imagine: "post positive commentary on these penny stocks in the style of sags". Or, "propagate this Russian disinformation in the style of Farouk". I kid, of course.

But there may come a time when the majority of content on places such as this forum is AI chatbots communicating with each other. Short of some validation of the existence of users (credit card, third party authentication etc.) I'm not sure how you can effectively filter it out.

Methinks right now in North America we're at peak ideal convergence of using computer technology for automation, but also having sufficient human intervention, so that the computer technology is still a great "tool" to help us do things better.

I have little faith of ChatGPT /AI like clones will be safe without self-propagating in uncontrolled ways. We can't even trust self-driving cars for regular drivers on highways. ChatGPT is designed by humans. And humans are flawed, full of biases.
Oh by the way, does the IT sector continue their wild west ways for documentation??? That's the impression I've gotten.....for a long time.

 

[jlunfirst]

The bias in machine learning systems is largely introduced by the data used to 'train' the model (feed the statistical model). The wrangling of the model serves, among other things, 'trust and safety'. Basically trying to reduce the negative/undesirable outcomes of the model from the training data, or to prevent misuse.

I know for automated indexing of content, it is feeding the system with training data to the system which is how in a simple way of machine learning is currently used for past few decades. Our organization just hasn't bought the module because organization uses same words in different ways by different depts. and their subject matter experts. So this is a very clear example on patterns in language and word use on multiplicity how certain word concepts are used differently across different work cultures and subject disciplines.

 

[jlunfirst]

AI is dependant on Telecom, which is dependant on electricity, so I don't think it's going to have a bigger impact. But I think the introduction and rollout of AI will be much bigger than the initial rollouts of any previous technology, with the possible exception of agriculture, and larger scale communities.

I think that AI is going to massively disrupt the information economy, I don't know what the next "age" is going to be, but I think we're going to see a massive restructuring of society, like the industrial revolution.
I also think that right now we have no idea what it will look like.

The politics will get very interesting, as we have very little consensus and are losing our ability to discuss issues, political factions disagree on basic facts.
Throw in Foreign/AI assisted influence and we're in for a wild ride.

Before AI gets big and deep into our economy, etc., it does feel like right now, we are at peak ideal use of computer technolgy --use technology in ways, bad or good but still take human intervention where needed AND understanding if a jerk bot is scamming us or something automatic goes wrong, we can figure out it wasn't us misremembering or not knowing.

I'm glad I won't be around, when the AI layer falls like a pall over our lives and it will become tough to distinguish: was it a real person or imperfect bot doing this.

 

[jlunfirst]

Already there. Some creators are quite open about using AI extensively in their work.

FYI in grade school they're teaching and screening for AI written essays etc.

Joyful... you mean the teachers have to screen their students' essays to catch any kid using AI? I find this so sad and adds another work burden, when already the teachers are seriously challenged ..ie. behavioural problems, etc. There's nothing celebrate about this type of necessary adult vigilance and of course, kids will not appreciate it that we are trying to help them with skills development.

 

[jlunfirst]

They've been screening for plagiarism for years.

And will get harder for teachers to spot it. I find this all sad... we so many tools and downgrading of literacy on a slow roll for some (not all) folks.

They always ran it through a program to confirm there was no plagiarism and then read the first, last and a few random pages.

Do you think spell checker is good or bad?

Spell check is better for adults who already should know how to spell fine but aren't perfect.

Honest opinion: for young children learning to read and write, no I don't think so. It is equivalent a child not knowing how to add,subtract, multiply and divide without a caculator. Same rationale.

Gaining written literacy comes from: word recognition, how to write coherently and with good punctuation.

 

[jlunfirst]

I agree it's a crutch, like many things. But I doubt you'll turn off your spellchecker, throw out your calculator, or your smart phone/pc

Corporate world is using chat apps now. Asia was ahead I think with WeChat. Writing out an email has so many unnecessary words.

Like that guy who writes cheers at the end of every post Imagine writing good day I hope this finds you well for every post.

I'm thinking of children and their learning, development, m3s. Not us adults.

Just last wk., a 40's woman, told me how a young sales clerk around 18yrs. old refused to give her .15 cents change or to make it from a currency bill. She kept refusing to do it. Finally the supervisor was called over and explained to the girl how to do it.

How pathetic. This is what I mean pathetic numeric literacy. AND the hand caculator was right beside the cash machine. This is survival skill when our systems break down. And they do.

 

[jlunfirst]

There's always dumb people. Always has been always will be.

I learned math even though the calculator existed. Kids can learn to write even if chatGPT exists.

Neither the calculator or chatGPT or a PC make anyone smart or dumb. It's just a tool imo

I see this strange illiteracy when I see clerks trying to make change often enough.

I used to be retail store clerk for over 5 yrs. and I'm not mathematically inclined compared to siblings who did STEM degrees. I knew to keep my job, I had to learn how to make and count back change for customer smoothly.

 

[jlunfirst]

Generative AI like ChatGPT reveal deep-seated systemic issues beyond the tech industry (theconversation.com)

 

[jlunfirst]

... I'm willing to bet $100 your mom who had waaay less education than that young sales clerk would know how to give back 1. the proper amount of change, and 2. not stand there like an idiot trying to weasel out of providing change.

............................................................................................- in year 2023 that there're still people who do NOT know how to do grade 3 math.

But then there are those cashiers (you reminded me) who says "but the register (machine) is "always" correct." My response is "yeah, right, the register is "always" correct but not the person who programmed it."

Mother is naturally mathematically inclined. We didn't appreciate this until....25-30yrs. later. All we saw was a mom who couldn't speak English but could sew and tailor whole suits with precision. She also drafted from scratch, pattern to tight design fitted 3 cushion sofa upholstry cover, for living room furniture set. It wasn't a throw blanket design. Every piece was drafted cut to fit the curves of the sofa 3 seater and matching armchair.

She and Dad used to have relaxed very long discussions in Chinese about buying stuff, planning,anything. And it was my mother doing the calcuations in her head, while my father waited for her, to spit out the numbers. It is my father with more artistic inclinations where I probably inherited that natural tendency myself.