Talking With Robots🦾

So I was sitting at my computer on this fine Tuesday night, and I was thinking to myself, "Hmm, it's been a while since I've written a newsletter."

So with that, I scrolled through my drafts and just discovered something titled "Talking with Robots" that had been sitting in my to-do list since late 2022, but to be honest, pulling this piece out now is more than appropriate given the latest and greatest: ChatGPT.

If by chance you are like me when I was very young and had been living under a rock, ChatGPT is basically the hottest topic around.

Pretty much every time I walk into a grocery store someone is talking about it (that's how you know it's a hot topic).

Simply put:

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence  chatbot developed by OpenAI and released in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 families of large language models (LLMs) and has been fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques (thanks, Wikipedia).

Last week I asked ChatGPT to write me a poem about the meaning of life.

I was kind of hoping the poem would not rhyme, but that's what you get for not specifying your instructions.

(Poem is posted in the comment section of this newsletter post)

Other than that, though, I looked at the finished product and thought, "Not bad."

Technology has come hella far in the last ten years.

And yet, there's a whole other side to this.

Every other tech-y article, Reddit post, tweet, or Youtuber that crosses my feed seems to be centered around the worry of, "AI is taking all of our jobs!!!"

For every post raving about AI, I seem to come across one reeking of panic.

I literally found one particular video whose caption read: "Heard of ChatGPT? DON'T learn to code", or something roughly along those lines. Now, I don't know if the Youtuber was being serious in this caption or was just making a joke; I didn't go to the trouble of watching the video because, as it were, I'd had my fill of the anti-AI declarations.

But did it make me laugh? Yes, it did.

Don't get me wrong, AI is a wonderful thing. Or, can be.

At the same time, it can be a terrible thing if we allow it; we must be careful going forward in advancing its development. And that's a wholeee 'notha newsletter.

A computer is not human. It's become quite good at mimicking the human intelligence, but at the end of the day, as it is right now, AI such like ChatGPT can only do just that: mimick. Again, very good at doing so.

But humans have some things AI does not (right now):

A heart and soul, emotions and experiences.

So, to cut to the chase, that's the reason why I'm not worried about my job or the job market. I have faith in myself and I have faith in humanity. I have confidence that, at its core, nothing can replace me. I have a personality (ok, so maybe future AI might have those too).

But I am a unique personality. There are so many things I love about myself as a developer and as a person. I am proud of the hills I climbed and fire I walked through to get to where I am today.

No one can replace me the way I am. No one can be me like me.

P.S.

If you're wondering why I put Alita as my cover photo for this article, it's because it's the best movie ever made and everyone should watch it.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT