Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in the news a lot over the past several months. Although there is no specific publishing date, it was first developed in September of 2021. However most of us didn’t learn about it until earlier this year.
I’ve been curious about it and have read articles and watched news reports with interest. I think the joke “artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity” has been effectively disproven. AI is emerging as a very powerful tool. And like all tools it can be used for any purpose the user determines.
I downloaded ChatGPT recently just to see what the fuss was about. It was very easy and quick to download and it’s free. So…why not? Okay, I’ve got it. Now what?
I’ve had an idea for a how-to book that I’d like to write so I decided to see if AI could help. I asked it to give me ten chapter headings on that subject and I instantly had them. Several were obvious choices and one was off the mark. But a couple of them were pretty good and I hadn’t thought of them before. Although I won’t be able to use them, they caused me to think in other directions and gave me some inspiration. So without knowing how to use AI, I was able to benefit from it just by goofing around.
The process is simple enough. You type in a question or request and it instantly (and I do mean instantly) responds. In another experiment I took a small point in my future book and asked it to write a 500 word article. It instantly gave me a pretty good article. I can see how this can be exploited by students and why teachers are worried.
ChatGPT is just the beginning. There are other AI programs that have recently come out. A battle for good and evil has already begun. Please remember that I’m an old man and if I’m aware of some of this stuff younger, more sophisticated people are also aware and familiar. This is, in part, a concern for striking actors in Hollywood. Their voices and images can be duplicated and used without their consent for the financial gain of the studios. This is generally referred to as “deep fakes”.
In a New Jersey high school some students used deep fake technology to create nude pictures of some of their classmates and then posted them online. I know it sounds outrageous that the ability exists, but not surprising that it was used. I would like to think that the perpetrators were clever….misguided, of course, but clever. Nope. This morning I saw an ad for another AI program and that was its primary selling point. Yes, these kids need to be held accountable, but so should the software developers.
On a brighter note, the Beatles released a new single this week with the help of AI. (Geez. With the release of a new single by the Beatles and a new album by the Rolling Stones it makes me wonder just how far we set back our clocks this weekend.) Paul, George, and Ringo tried to do something with the remaining cassette demo that John had recorded before his death in 1980 but the original was, in George’s words, “F**king rubbish”. Now, nearly 30 years later, with the help of this new technology, Paul, Ringo, and others were able to make it work.
There were several technical problems, of course, but the biggest hurdle then was that John had simply sang and played piano into a cassette recorder. The piano overpowered his voice in several places and there was no way to balance them out…..until now. With the help of AI they were able to separate the voice and the piano and put them on different tracks. I recently saw a demonstration of the process and was amazed. The demonstrator played piano and sang into a single microphone, took this recording and plugged it into the AI program and instantly got back two separate tracks which could each be manipulated individually. No fuss…no muss.
There is no doubt we are at the beginning of a turning point. For better or worse this technology will change our lives. Yes we should be worried about it’s potential and need to take precautions. But we should also be excited. The possibilities are mind blowing. I’m not too worried because predicting the future has only ever worked with tabloid astrologers. If you watch the movie “2001, A Space Odyssey” you’ll see the video phone (of course) but it’s attached to the kitchen wall. I should add that we don’t have a presence in orbit around Jupiter either. And the pocket communicator in the original Star Trek TV show looks absolutely quaint.
So, for now, I will watch my back but hope for the best. Perhaps it will eventually make me a decent cup of coffee or help me decipher the words to “Louie, Louie”.
