I still remember the impact of Google, back around 1998, which fundamentally changed the way we search for information.
Even though I still use it multiple times a day, that quarter-century-old search engine is looking pretty anemic compared with ChatGPT from OpenAI and the “new Bing” from Microsoft, which uses technology from OpenAI. But Google isn’t sitting still. It’s launching its own AI chatbot, called Bard, which is currently available only to a limited number of people in the U.S. and U.K.
These chatbots work by analyzing very large language models from online books, articles, social media posts, blogs and pretty much anything they can find on the internet. With that vast amount of data at their disposal, they can answer questions or even carry out tasks, such as writing computer code or, soon, drawing pictures based on what the user asks for.
I’ve played around with ChatGPT, its close cousin, Microsoft Bing and Google Bard. “Played” is the operative word. I have mostly been having fun using these tools, but I’ve also used them in a couple of productive ways. It was fun asking ChatGPT to do things like write poems. I even asked it to write a poem about me, and it complied in ways that were both humorous and flattering.
As per being productive, I used ChatGPT to help me write a script for one of my weekly ConnectSafely segments for CBS News Radio, and the advice it gave was basic but spot on. For the record, I disclosed the use of this AI tool in my segment and don’t plan to make a habit of it. But it does illustrate the promise and the peril of using tools like this to create content for publication and broadcasting. In my case, it was a publicly disclosed experiment, but I wonder — and to some extent worry — about it being used to take the place of human creativity,
Some educators worry about it being used by their students, and there’s been a lot of discussion and consternation about it, including bans in some school…
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