Creativity for all but loss of skills?
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Especially notable is the depth of humanlike expertise large language models display.
These new AI tools cant read minds, of course.
Second, these AI tools raise questions aroundintellectual property protections.
As society navigates the implications of these new AI tools, the public seems ready to embrace them.
Educators are preparing for a world where students have ready access to AI-powered text generators.
The chatbotChatGPT went viralquickly, as did image generatorDall-E miniand others.
In my experience, these tools are good at exploring ideas that I havent thought about before.
Ive been impressed by the models capacity to translate my instructions into coherent text or code.
Once I see what these tools generate, I can evaluate their quality and edit heavily.
Overall, I think they raise the bar on what is considered creative.
But I have several reservations.
One set of problems is their inaccuracies small and big.
If users arent critical of what these tools produce, the tools are potentially harmful.
Recently, Meta shut down itsGalacticalarge language model for scientific textbecause it made up facts but sounded very confident.
The concern was that it could pollute the internet with confident-sounding falsehoods.
Another problem is biases.
Language models can learn from the datas biases and replicate them.
These biases arehard to see in text generation but very clear in image generation models.
Another problem is plagiarism.
Recent research has shown thatimage generation tools often plagiarize the work of others.
Does the same happen with ChatGPT?
I believe that we dont know.
The tool might be paraphrasing its training data an advanced form of plagiarism.
Work in my lab shows that text plagiarism detection tools arefar behind when it comes to detecting paraphrasing.
These tools are in their infancy, given their potential.
For now, I believe there are solutions to their current limitations.
Meanwhile, technology has quashed, one by one, claims that cognitive tasks require a human brain.
The first adding machine wasinvented in 1623.
This past year, a computer-generated workwon an art contest.
I believe that the singularity the moment when computers meet and exceed human intelligence is on the horizon.
How will human intelligence and creativity be valued when machines become smarter and more creative than the brightest people?
There will likely be a continuum.
In some domains, people still value humans doing things, even if a computer can do it better.
Cosmopolitan magazine used DALL-E 2 to produce this cover.
Hearst Magazine Media, Inc.
In other domains, human skill will seem costly and extraneous.
Take illustration, for example.
And, of course, this question isnt black or white.
Certain jobs like typist almost completely disappeared.
Further, new jobs and skills appeared that were previously unimagined, like the oft-included resume item MS Office.
And the market for high-end document production remained, becoming much more capable, sophisticated and specialized.
To see this, consider just three aspects where large language models fall short.
Minor changes in the prompt can result in a major change in the output.
Second, large language models can generate inappropriate or nonsensical output without warning.
Notably,they cannot do relatively simple math.
This means that their output can unexpectedly bemisleading, biased, logically faulty, or just plain false.
These failings are opportunities for creative and knowledge workers.
Many types of specialized and highly technical language will remain out of reach of machines for the foreseeable future.
Some steps in technology feel larger than others.
Yahoodeployed human curators to index emerging contentduring the dawn of the World Wide Web.
The release ofOpenAIs ChatGPTindicates another leap.
ChatGPT wraps a state-of-the-art large language model tuned for chat into a highly usable interface.
It puts a decade of rapid progress in artificial intelligence at peoples fingertips.
This tool canwrite passable cover lettersand instruct users onaddressing common problems in user-selected language styles.
For the cover letter example, multiple prompts are possible.
The question is whether society will use this moment to advance equity or exacerbate disparities.
