By: Ella Garbarsky

Most people have seen the movie The Terminator. Even if you are not a sci-fi, action, or robot-loving person, you probably have still seen it. It’s a classic. Supposedly, the movie is set in "the future"—in the year 2029, which now does not seem so far away... Now, of course, I am not alluding to the fact that "Skynet" might take over the world with a new line of nearly indestructible robots called terminators... or am I?

 

Recently, the use of artificial intelligence, or A.I., has become increasingly popular in today’s day and age. A.I. has been integrated into almost every home in America with things like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and more, which know just about everything there is to know and answer your beck and call.

 

Personally, I use my Alexa every day and ask about just about everything. I use it to convert measurements when I bake or cook, I ask it the weather every morning, and I even ask it on occasion to compute certain math problems. My point is, I find these new AI advancements in technology quite useful; the thing I am wondering, however, is, where do we draw the line? When does an average personal assistant such as Alexa or even the Google Assistant become too smart?

 

The newest form of A.I. that was just invented is called ChatGPD. This new form of A. It has the ability to learn and grow the more you use it. ChatGPD can type entire essays and form responses to questions posed by not just another robot but real people too. This form of A. I can learn to write in the exact same style that a human user does as well. Forbes says that ChatGPD has the "technological equivalent of a polymath genius…". It is crazy to think that a form of technology invented so recently has the same "brain" power as a polymath genius.

 

This new A. It definitely has its perks, but it also comes with a list of new challenges that now have to be dealt with. For example, ChatGPD has made it incredibly easy for students to cheat, forge their own essays, and more. Many students have already tried accessing this new A. I'm making it harder and harder for teachers to trace who is using ChatGPD and who’s not. However, a student from Princeton was able to successfully develop software that can detect the use of ChatGPD, which is going to help our society, hopefully for the better.

 

I personally am someone who still values old-fashioned conversations and lunch dates to catch up with an old friend or a family member. The one-on-one interaction is authentic and rejuvenating, and it gets an A.I am as human-like as ChatGPD, and I sometimes wonder how our communication as a population is going to decline. I can definitely see people using this. to write messages to their family or friends because it is easier, or they simply think they do not have the time or energy to do it themselves. With all of the technology and new inventions, I wonder if there will come a time when we will be doubting if we got a true, heartfelt message from someone or if it was just ChatGPD creating a computer-generated message on the other side of the phone, computer, or TV.

 

Humans are the most intelligent beings on Earth, and I find it both interesting and horrifying that we have created an AI that could potentially become smarter than a human. We are beginning to give robots and technology a level of freedom that I am not sure will be beneficial for our society in the long term, which brings me back to my opening thought. Much like in the movie Terminator, will robots eventually take over our world, controlling our everyday lives down to the second?

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Sources:

Aue, Mary von. “Elon Musk Believes AI to Be Far More Dangerous than Nukes.” Inverse. Inverse, March 15, 2018. https://www.inverse.com/article/42194-elon-musk-dangers-of-ai#:~:text=%E2%80%9CMark%20my%20words%3A%20A.I.%20is,of%20human%20civilization%E2%80%9D%20are%20threatened. 

 

Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. “How CHATGPT Is Redefining Human Expertise: Or How to Be Smart When AI Is Smarter than You.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, January 16, 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2023/01/12/how-chatgpt-is-redefining-human-expertise-or-how-to-be-smart-when-ai-is-smarter-than-you/. 

 

Shankland, Stephen. “Why We're Obsessed with the Mind-Blowing Chatgpt AI Chatbot.” CNET. Accessed February 24, 2023. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/why-were-all-obsessed-with-the-mind-blowing-chatgpt-ai-chatbot/.