Irish Examiner View: Landmark in artificial intelligence progress

ChatGPT, or more advanced successors, may come to influence not just academia or teaching but politics, law, or journalism

Teachers fear pupils will rely on ChatGPT to generate answers to questions they set, but there are implications for many other areas.

Science fiction fans ponder when exactly "the singularity" will occur; the tipping point when technology in all its forms becomes so powerful that it takes over society. 

In popular culture this often means non-optimal results for human beings, as devotees of Matrix and Terminator  film franchises can attest.

Did we move a step closer to that event with the arrival of ChatGPT just last month? For the uninitiated, this is a chatbot developed by San Francisco-based research company OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, among others, and appears to be a landmark in the progress of generative artificial intelligence.

ChatGPT has the ability to debug computer code and solve complicated maths questions, but it has caught the eye with its ability to answer general questions on all topics far more fluently than any of its predecessors. 

The bot generates lengthy essay-type replies which are not markedly different from those offered by real human beings.

This has already caused concern among teachers in the USA, who have expressed their fears that pupils will rely on ChatGPT to generate answers to questions they set, but there are implications for many other areas.

ChatGPT, or its more advanced successors, may come to influence not just academia or teaching, but politics, law, or even journalism.

Time to come to terms with our mechanical overlords? Just ask ChatGPT for the answer.