AI experts on whether you should be « terrified » of ChatGPT

ChatGPT is artificial intelligence that writes for you, any kind of writing you like – letters, song lyrics, research papers, recipes, therapy sessions, poems, essays, outlines, even software code. And despite its clunky name (GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer), within five days of its launch, more than a million people were using it.

How easy is it to use?

Try typing in, « Write a limerick about the effect of AI on humanity. »

Microsoft has announced it will build the program into Microsoft Word. The first books written by ChatGPT have already been published. (Well, self-published, by people.)

« I think this Is huge, » said professor Erik Brynjolfsson, director of Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab. « I wouldn’t be surprised 50 years from now, people looked back and say, wow, that was a really seminal set of inventions that happened in the early 2020s.

« Most of the U.S. economy is knowledge and information work, and that’s who’s going to be most squarely affected by this, » he said. « I would put people like lawyers right at the top of the list. Obviously, a lot of copywriters, screenwriters. But I like to use the word ‘affected,’ not ‘replaced,’ because I think if done right, it’s not going to be AI replacing lawyers; it’s going to be lawyers working with AI replacing lawyers who don’t work with AI. »