HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRIPEVINE: OUR NEW ABNORMAL

Let me tell you about my very first encounter with ChatGPT, the immensely popular, new AI language chatbot. My friend, who had the app, asked me to write in a sentence, just any random sentence; and so I typed in, “So many public speakers claim to be telling the truth, but their pronouncements are riddled with fallacies and questionable data.” And in five seconds, ChatGPT came back with a 300-word essay that expanded on that one prompt I had provided.
I skimmed through the essay and was suitably impressed. For the first three paragraphs or so, it didn’t even use any of the words of the prompt I had supplied. It was succinct, to the point; but if I had to level a criticism, it was devoid of any real personality or uniqueness of “voice” – more like an anonymous, textbook treatment of a topic. Asking myself whether it would have passed muster for publishing, or as the core of an opinion column, I had to admit it very well could.
And that’s when beyond impressed, I was also fearful of the implications this carried – how AI was now inhabiting an arena that would have to be regarded as definitely useful and productive, but also put originality, honesty, and other ethical questions on a precarious footing.
For those who aren’t familiar with ChatGPT, there’s no need to feel left out… yet. It was developed by the San Francisco-based company OpenAI, and was released Nov. 30, 2022, a scant six months ago. It’s officially described as an artificial intelligence chatbot built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 families of large language models, and fine-tuned using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. It garnered immediate attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. GPT refers to “generative pre-trained transformer.” *OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman (photo from YouTube)*

ChatGPT mimics human conversation, can write and debug computer programs, can write business pitches, compose music, teleplays, and student essays, answer test questions, write poetry and song lyrics, simulate chat rooms, and even play games like tic-tac-toe, and simulate an ATM. So yes, that’s quite an impressive list.
In January 2023, ChatGPT reached over 100 million users, making it the fastest growing consumer application to date; with over 13 million daily visitors in 2023. There’s even a tool called “AI classifier for indicating AI-written text.” A premium paid service called ChatGPT Plus was released March 14, 2023, specifically using GPT-4.
It’s gained such notoriety that the TV show South Park devoted a March 2023 episode, entitled “Deep Learning,” to the chatbot. In the episode, the chatbot was used by a failing student, and for composing love letters. So to call ChatGPT a current cultural phenomenon would be an understatement – that it’s become one in just six months is quite the achievement.
I was talking to the head of a real estate brokerage the other day and when I asked him about ChatGPT, he was super-enthusiastic about it being used by his team. It’s vastly improved their letter-writing skills; and he downplayed my question about whether it was problematic that when his sales people would have to take face-to-face meetings based on the “perfec” pitches they sent, wouldn’t it be obvious to the client that the salesperson speaking to said client couldn’t have composed the letter? For him, that was a minor concern, and if the letter was the proverbial “foot in the door” with potential customers, he wasn’t going to question how “honest” the letter was. *ChatGPT on the Apple App Store.*

With parents I spoke to, there was genuine worry. If their school children were using ChatGPT, would they even know? Would the teachers be able to discern that the chatbot was being utilized? The concern here was that it was tantamount to cheating; and what kind of educating is being achieved, or retained, if the kids would be resorting to the app for the papers and essays they submit.
But corollary to this, is there a parent who wouldn’t want his child’s grades to improve; so would some turn a blind eye to the ethical implications? And would you now have to favor a grading system that relies purely on sudden quizzes and supervised exams — and forego submitted work?
The head of a creative ad agency told me that his people would be too “ma-pride” to even consider using AI. But admitted it is encroaching on so many aspects of our lives, and detection in the near future may be not that easy.
Where issues of ethics, honesty, and originality are concerned, it’s easy to say ChatGPT should be banned; but that’s not a realistic scenario anymore. So the question is raised as to whether each company makes a decision on regulating its use – and I’m curious to know if that’s even feasible. Plus if your competitor embraces AI tech and it helps them outperform you, will your “principled” response fly out the window?