I didn’t want to write about ChatGPT for the longest time because 1. everyone else is writing about it and 2. even ChatGPT can write about itself. But I changed my mind on that after attending the BRITE ‘23 conference at Columbia Business School centered around brand, innovation, and technology areas where ChatGPT was heavily discussed throughout the day.

It’s been a very long time since I witnessed heated conversations around some new technology. We had www3, then NFTs, then crypto, and they are all great technologies and have their places. But I did not hear the heated discussions I am witnessing on ChatGPT with those. So there is something very different.

You can tell if something is powerful by paying attention to people’s feelings and I am feeling a lot of unease, curiosity, and even some tension when people discuss ChatGPT. I think some of it comes from uncertainty around if our jobs can be replaced, some come from the opportunities it presents, and some comes from being proud and creative human beings, and coming face-to-face with the reality that a machine can actually take something away from us that is so human, writing, painting, making music, reading, speaking. And it can do it so well that it can fool us in many ways that we will be discovering altogether.

So what is ChatGPT?

I asked ChatGPT to explain what it is in a short paragraph with a 5 year old’s vocabulary and here is its answer.

ChatGPT is a talking robot that knows lots of things and can answer questions for you. It's like having a smart friend who can tell you about almost anything you want to know!

In its simplicity, this is all true. Whatever you can find on the internet, ChatGPT uses that information to provide us answers. Think of it as a search engine 2.0, in fact it’s making Google sweat big time. This is the power of this technology.

Though it’s not the fact that it can devour the internet to provide you an answer that makes people nervous, it’s the fact that it can generate content in English or any other language. We saw this with Midjourney and Dall-E first, the tools with which you can create images by typing their descriptions. This is a giant leap because copywriters, designers, illustrators, and photographers everywhere are extremely concerned with these advancements. The ones that adopted these technologies increased their output or their free time just by requesting AI to generate content for their clients. On the other hand, the clients who had discovered and adopted have started moving away from their service providers or are negotiating better terms for their engagement.

I am having a cup of soup, will there be ChatGPT in it?

One of the first things I realized is that many people don’t know what ChatGPT is and add the word “ChatGPT” in conversations and questions where it doesn’t make too much sense. But this goes to show that people are expecting this to transform our lives. Even more so than the pandemic we experienced.

Are you reading a human or AI generated?

I think at the end it will not matter. I know that AI generates content that’s originally created by humans, so there isn’t anything original in there, for now. And if you are using tools like Grammarly, then you already are using AI-assisted technologies to a degree. But for some people this will matter. They will want to know if they are reading someone’s actual, authentic thoughts, and there is value in that.

So, this is going to be an interesting discussion and I am looking forward to seeing how we will solve this. Are we going to enforce AI to watermark the content it generates or are we as humans, going to add an indicator in our content saying it’s human generated. Already heard the latter is happening in some art galleries in Germany,

And overall how it’s all going to be governed, checked, and verified?

It’s not only the human language

ChatGPT is proving to be a useful tool for developers as well. I’ve been observing a 4 day Slack heated debate on this at the time I wrote this post. It’s between two developers who are debating the impact of ChatGPT specifically 5 years in the future. How it may disrupt web and app development and force the development teams to shrink in size. It’s absolutely incredible to witness such a debate between seasoned developers and how the future differs in their points of view.

Again, another exciting topic to continue to listen to and see how it all develops. But again, this goes to show the power and impact of this new technology we are just starting to use. If you haven’t done so yet, go ahead and ask ChatGPT to write you a piece of Javascript or Python script that does something.

Privacy and security

If not regulated AI can be disruptive and even destructive. This is one of those technologies that if it’s in the wrong hands we can expect terrible things to happen. So, again we need to work with our local, state, and federal governments to put in place checks and balances that will regulate AI technology.

So what will happen in the future?

All I can tell is that ChatGPT and other generative AI are extremely exciting to play and experiment with. There are thousands of product ideas brewing and some already started to hit the market. With some care and attention, I think we are in for a nice show with AI. On the more cautious side, AI will end some careers, create new ones, force people to other areas, and demand more creativity from us to succeed in the future. So shine those brain cells, feed your neurons, and get prepared for what’s next.

So, in other words, just like the Chinese farmer’s story goes, is it good or bad? Who is to say?