The Real Danger Of ChatGPT

 

MUSIC (via Epidemic Sound)

Stationary Sign, "Paint By Imagination"
Arthur Benson, "Sneaking Into The Kitchen"
Arthur Benson, "Mixed Emotions"
Sture Zetterberg "Merry Christmas Baby"

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The Nerdwriter is a series of video essays about art, culture, politics, philosophy and more.

[liqwiz]

"Not to write is to live according to the language of others."

That's a powerful statement.

[CaptRobau]

I really expected the twist to be that the whole script was written by ChatGPT 😁

[slipperydippery]

As an IT professional (and former website builder) it's pretty ironic to see this video end with a commercial for Squarespace. 10 years ago we could have said that sites like Squarespace that only provide cookie-cutter templates that are far from unique don't let people show their identity through a truly hand made website.
The reality is, as with any new technology, that the new technology does not replace the old one. There are probably more professional website builders today than there were 10 years ago, and services like Squarespace, Themeforest, etc. allow people that would otherwise never have a permanent online presence to create a simple, basic useful page.

I expect the same for ChatGPT. I doubt that it will replace professional writers any time soon, but it can likely provide fodder for clickbait sites and other low quality content. As for language teachers all over the world; it's now their turn to get creative in finding ways for students to "show their work"

[KevinHolik]

"Not to write is to live according to the language of others" is such a powerful quote! As a creative, I've felt this abstractly, but the way you phrase it is so concise and perfect.

[SquizzMe]

I'm a High School English teacher and I get asked that question all the time. I tell them that it's not the actual essay that they'll use in the future, but the many skills they used to create it.

[muleFUEL]

I see a lot of people saying that AI generated text won't change the world, but what I'm worried about is education. I think now more than ever we see the importance of being able to think for yourself, generate your own opinions, and recognize when you are wrong or missing something. And with social media and content creation moving more and more towards endless consumption of their product I fear children will leave learning by the wayside, out source homework, and get lost in the terrible echo chambers of the virtual world. Hell, this is happening to adults as well. We need to make sure we preserve critical thinking.

[TheCoachZed]

In university, one teacher's final exam revolved around a research paper... that you had to write by hand in the exam hall. He required no formal sourcing, but you had to base your arguments on what you'd learned in class. This is an excellent way to get around ChatGPT's capabilities. Require on-the-spot formulation of thoughts and then communication of such through written language. Making the process happen in front of the teacher means there can be no behind-the-scenes cheating.

[TwoTonTiger]

"Are we going to use this in the real world?" No, that's not what you're learning it for haha

Do athletes lift weights during a game? Of course not - so why do they even do it?

It's training that improves your muscles. The brain is no different!

[MrChaluliss]

Really appreciate you mentioning the value of writing that is often not understood. I can't tell you how many high functioning, well paid, skilled professionals that I have met who didn't really have a voice of their own when given opportunity to express it. Most people don't take the time to explore the space of language on their own. Most don't understand that writing for yourself--as an exploratory tool--is possibly the most immediate ways to unlock the treasured trait of being a person who thinks for themselves. As you said, it is really the only way TO think for yourself.

I think conversation can act as a similar canvas, though I don't know if conversation is as readily available, nor as open-ended. In conversation I have certainly explored the world through language, and come to important realizations and defining philosophies and ideas. But only in the presence of people who are calmly and effortfully engaged in the same kind of conversation. Unfortunately, not many folks value this sort of activity; even less could put to words what the activity is at all... an arcane behavior in that sense. I think technology has made it much easier to all together avoid individualistic thought and exploration, which is not all bad, but honestly, I do see there being some interesting partitions being generated by the status inherently granted to those who CAN think for themselves and practice it regularly, and those who can't for any given reason.

Thinking for yourself is like a super power. We all look up to those who do it as leaders. That is why anyone watching this video IS watching this video. It's built into your biology to respect such activity. Don't take the idea lightly y'all.

[bradbell]

I outsourced my life to AI. Now I have the time to float weightlessly submerged in an oxygenated gelatinous goo

[DigitalNovelist]

As a teacher and fellow writer, this almost moved me to tears. It's a shame even less people in the future will experience the benefits of finding who they are and what they believe through writing.

[RenameUranusCaelus]

To me, this has the classic feel of a nerdwriter episode. It's informative, thoughtful, and slightly It's also pithy and engaging.
Great job, my dude. Keep beltin out those winners.

[ReidCoffman]

I have bought so many stocks in individual companies. There are so many stocks going to rocket in the long run, right now safe to invest in an ETF that tracks the S&P500 and ride it out. I put $130k into some growth stocks with a Financial advisor handling my portfolio. some of my picks are, NVR, LISP.SW, SEB, VOO, DOWJ, BRK-A, AAPL, IVV, NYSE, NASDAQ, TSLA, I've gotten 82% return so far this year I'll see where it goes.

[sinceritiesofyouandi]

Terry Eagleton wrote, “by having to grapple with language in a more strenuous, self-conscious way than usual, the world which that language contains is vividly renewed” and I find that to be one of the most compelling arguments for what the humanities accomplishes that is constantly overshadowed by the glitz and glamour of the development of new technologies or AI

[luuketaylor]

Came for the ChatGPT content, got hit with a mildly existential crisis regarding the concept of understanding uniquely through the process of writing. Loved it. Thank you.

[PhillipsOfficialMsc]

In high school, I learned more about writing and thinking from debate than I ever did from an English class. Getting feedback at a tournament (i.e., lossing), going back, editing, then going back the next week and getting more feedback (i.e., losing again) taught me how to really think. I think that type of work is what, at least at the high school level, teacher are going to need to be assigning and teaching. You will need to be grading students based on logic and rhetoric, often displayed in real time in front of you.

[seniorp]

As someone who has worked with IT for 30 years I immediately recognized chatgpt as next level and I knew it would be very disruptive. However I know it’s next iterations (coming soon) will be much better. So this version writes like a high school kid and still needs a human to edit the work, and it doesn’t do math well, and makes factual errors—do you think that it’s not going to be 10x better in a year or two? Don’t get complacent about its weaknesses now and think this doesn’t change anything.

[Mikkjes]

As a math teacher, I experience that very question way too often! "Why do I need to learn this, when I can just use a calculator?". It's so difficult to help kids understand that without this knowledge, they won't understand the subtle nuances in mathematical operations, or how to rearrange math in a smarter way - or indeed understand what they are actually calculating! Only through an insight into the details and operations of the calculations will they gain an understanding that allows them to see the underlying patterns and meaning in mathematics. At that point, the calculator becomes a useful tool for routine operations.
Ultimately, tools that perform operations for us, should - in my opinion - only be used when we have learned the patterns themselves; and they should still be trained regularly. as someone else wrote, the brain needs exercise as well. Having electronic brains perform the work for us, lessens human value and usefulness in our materialistic world, and in a sense diminishes human meaning while having nothing to replace it with.

Creative thought, whatever form of expression or thought pattern it takes - written, pattern, numerical, visual, auditive, tactile, etc. - is something that should be nutured, and it grants us a strong skillset that can be used in a variety of areas in life. We should teach kids not just to be productive citizens, but also to be humans - and to be able to carry that torch of humanity forward.

AI is inevitable - but how we use it, and how we include it into our society, is critical for the future of our species. This bot might not be the great breakthrough - but AI is developing rapidly, and if we're not careful, we won't have a place for ourselves in the world we're creating.

[justincain]

These AI tools remind me of the Library of Babel. Where all text (with some constraints) is already written. The only problem is, it's just as difficult to find any specific text as it is to just write it yourself. I don't think these tools can kill artists and writers because of how personal art is.

The problem with these tools is that people have to work to survive. Companies can use these tools because they are cheap and way more efficient than a human. There will always be value in creating art, but I definitely see it becoming even more difficult to succeed financially than it already was.

[Vesperitis]

I'll say this, every ChatGPT text I've read has felt like the literary equivalent of the Uncanny Valley. There's something distinctly... off about the way it writes that betrays a lack of personality behind the writing.

The problem is that most current mass-produced written works already lack personality, having to be generic (a.k.a. enough to appeal to a mass audience that is decreasingly interested to read long texts. A text written by ChatGPT can sometimes disguise itself well enough to look authentic, and a less discerning audience won't know how or care enough to tell the difference.

But then again, AI still hasn't completely replaced humans in a lot of aspects yet. For example, AI art has been around for slightly longer and is still never not creepy. Who knows where this technology will lead to or how society will react to it.