Editor’s note: This is the third column in our new TECK TALK column. The first column talked about lower barriers to entry. The second talked about the need for innovation relations to be mutually beneficial to be sustainable.
Because our author is also a musical composer (Juilliard-trained), he has provided a musical composition for you to listen to while reading this column. The piece is titled “The Rise Prelude.” It was originally written on guitar and then expanded for orchestra.
It’s time for all of us to develop a more comfortable relationship with artificial intelligence (AI). For today, at least, I’m calling this “AI rapport”. Unlike AI, the word rapport can at least be defined. The dictionary in my Mac defines rapport as a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.
AI is the single most powerful and, therefore, most important thing happening to the world right now. It is as important a game changer as the automobile and the computer. It is too important to limit your understanding to second-hand information. You need to personally experience it.
Although everyone and their brother claims to know about it and every company claims to include it in their products, there is an extremely direct and free way to form your opinion.
Understanding AI, especially complex concepts like Chat GPT, requires more than just reading others’ opinions or listening to what people tell you. It demands personal exploration and curiosity.
Simply go to https://chat.openai.com/auth/login, create a free account, log in, and play around by typing some questions to experience by yourself first-hand what it is and what it is doing. You can find out plenty in under five minutes.
Developing a comfortable relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) is essential in today’s world. At first glance, one might be tempted to dismiss AI’s relevance to one’s life and choose to ignore it. Recent discussions, such as a February 14th article in The New York Times titled When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your Humanity Will Matter More Than Ever suggest otherwise.
We have all been using artificial intelligence for a very long time. I studied artificial intelligence in college in the mid-70s and by the time I got my master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1980, I was being recruited by companies working on speech recognition, which is by the way a somewhat ubiquitous form of AI.
If you have been using speech recognition, you are using AI. All of our GPS systems are another form of AI helping us get places. Even a Google search for any topic on the Internet is using AI. It has now become a buzzword that shows up everywhere and permits almost every company to claim that they’re using AI, which is easily explainable because they have already been using AI for decades.
AI is ingrained in our digital interactions. What sets today’s AI apart is its increased generalization, allowing for conversational interactions—an unprecedented advancement. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, the current increasingly generalized ubiquitous form of AI.
It is such a big deal that I find myself thinking back to when I was 17 years old in 1970, having to change my thinking that computers were a waste of my time to understand that they were so powerful that I could no longer ignore them. It became clear more than 50 years ago that if you wanted to get a degree in any kind of science or engineering, you would have to learn how to use a computer. There was simply no choice any longer.
Well, here, 50 years later, I come to the same conclusion about artificial intelligence. It is simply too powerful to ignore, except this time, this is not just true for people who want to get degrees in science and engineering. It is now true for anybody who wants to communicate by writing, which is pretty much every professional in every field. Writers who use artificial intelligence for help in grammar, spelling, and other kinds of editing processes are going to outperform those who do not. And by the way, don’t you think that grammar and spell-checking are also artificial intelligence
Generalized artificial intelligence has evolved so much since last March when I first began to explore the use of Chat GPT that I cannot recall any other technology in my lifetime that has advanced this rapidly or been adopted this widely. A year ago, when I asked Chat GPT if I could trust what it had to say, it told me, “No”. Chat GPT told me that it could not tell the difference between a romance novel and a doctoral dissertation. It just read everything that was out there, but it had no way of knowing what was true or false.
This Is still the case. Artificial intelligence can still not be trusted to know the difference between wrong and right. It has no way to tell. This does not provide a good enough excuse to ignore it. We have to learn to live in harmony with it, which is why I refer to AI rapport.
When we use our GPS systems in our cars, they frequently give us directions that make no sense, like when you’re driving along a coastal road and it tells you to make a sharp left turn into the ocean. Does this give us an excuse not to use GPS? No, of course, we use GPS, but we know that we still have to use judgment to determine whether or not to listen to it.
The same is true whenever we hire a specialist, including doctors and lawyers. We still have to make the determination whether the advice we are receiving makes sense. AI is in the same category. It can be very useful, but it can also hallucinate information that is nonsensical. Have you ever asked a person a question and received a nonsensical answer? Of course, you have.
We have to each make sense of all of the information coming into our lives or constantly be driven to distraction.When I attempt to use speech recognition, as I am doing right now, in writing this column, a lot of nonsensical things are transcribed, and I have to get rid of them. When I attempt to use the GPS to get to some place in a region that I’m familiar with, I have to frequently overrule it. When I do a Google search, much of what comes back is a waste of my time. It still makes sense to use speech recognition, GPS systems, and Google searches, but you have to take responsibility by using your own intelligence as the final arbiter of information.
Although I can no longer beat my computer at chess, I have zero fear about ever being replaced by AI. DO NOT give in to the fearmongering. Do not be afraid of AI, and do not ignore it either. Form your own judgement. Try it and then see how you feel.
But no matter how you feel, you are still going to have to get into rapport with it. It is here and here to stay, and those who use it will outperform those who do not.