With the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT text-prompt application in late 2022, there has been a firestorm of excitement surrounding artificial intelligence and the future of knowledge work.
There is a response of near-apathy from some, while others have an apocalyptical view of the rise of AI. I believe that both extreme views are rooted in a misunderstanding of how AI and machine learning work on a granular level.
The idea that AI and programs like ChatGPT are versions of organic and self-conscious intelligence as we find in humans is simply not the case. At least not yet.
The human brain is unique in its ability to maintain a constant state of awareness of its surroundings and the circumstances of any data that it receives. It then can process information and formulate responses to external prompts that are useful, appropriate, wise, calculated, etc… all depending on the external circumstances and the goals toward which the human is striving.
Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, relies on its neural network. Neural networks are static infrastructures that receive training, but do not change their intelligence or output depending on the circumstances–most of the time they don’t even know there are circumstances.
These artificial intelligence tools return answers based on rules formed within them and they only change when they are re-trained.
Even the best AI programs at the moment are limited by the combinations of known topics that they can pull information from and present them in other known styles of presentation.
This makes tools such as ChatGPT useful for generating ideas and creating outlines, but the need for adding context, adjusting for the reader, adding deep and specific technical knowledge, and ensuring factual correctness is still very much needed from a human.
Rather than seeing AI as a tool that might take away our jobs or control the world, it’s more likely that AI will become the way that everyday people learn to use automation in their own homes and personal lives in the same way that Windows brought about an operating system that brought the PC into the common man’s home.